


A Spot of Trouble

by slightlykylie



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Hicsqueak, Pregnant!Hecate, Rivals to Accidental Co-Parents to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:08:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlykylie/pseuds/slightlykylie
Summary: What happens is, like so very, very many things, Mildred Hubble’s fault.
Relationships: Amelia Cackle | Ada Cackle & Hardbroom, Hardbroom/Pentangle (Worst Witch)
Comments: 123
Kudos: 214





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in a slight AU and occurs before Spelling Bee, so Hecate and Pippa are on the same footing that they are at the beginning of that episode. Enjoy!

What happens is, like so very, very many things, Mildred Hubble’s fault. 

It begins with Pippa Pentangle and her wretched classes in “modern magic.” It goes without saying that Hecate sees no need for modern magic -- surely the traditions of the witching culture, stretching back centuries, honed and strengthened by time and dedication, should be enough for any true mistress of the craft? But, over Hecate’s protests, Ada has authorized an “exchange of teachers” with Pentangle’s, and so Pippa is there right now, in _her_ potions lab, teaching _her_ students -- thus far, a simple class on familiar control; the room is full of squirming cats, being put through their paces with varying degrees of success. Hecate has opted, sourly, to witness the lesson, rather than cede the room and the hour entirely to Pippa’s nonsense. She’s sitting at the edge of things, two seats down from Mildred Hubble, focusing a withering stare on _Miss_ Pentangle. She notes, still more sourly, that _Miss_ Pentangle doesn’t seem withered in the least. She carries on brightly, apparently quite oblivious to Hecate’s presence. And then, after some preliminaries, her lesson plan becomes clear, and Hecate’s eyebrows rise almost to her hairline. 

Pippa intends to impregnate a cat.

“A useful spell,” she’s telling the class, who are watching her raptly, much more raptly than they have ever watched Hecate. “It’s advanced magic, but I’ve persuaded Miss Cackle to let you all have a look at how it works; she’d likely be needing to do this soon anyway. Cats which have been conceived by magic are far more likely to become powerful familiars. And they will always share a special bond with the witch who performs the spell. They are also longer-lived than most cats, and of hardier constitution.”

“But won’t they be half-human?” Maud Spellbody asks. “How does that work, then?”

“Good question -- Maud, is it? If the spell is done properly, the cat born this way will carry some of the nature, the character of the witch who cast the spell. But no physical traits are heritable in cross-species impregnation.”

“Cross-species. Does that mean it can go the other way around as well?" Felicity asks eagerly. "Can humans get pregnant this way? Say, if two women wanted to have a baby -- "

“Certainly,” Pippa says with a smile. There are murmurs from the class. Hecate finds herself grinding her nails into her palms. She can’t see how this subject is appropriate for children at all, let alone for first-years. 

“And a man -- could a man get pregnant too?” Enid asks. 

“Ah -- that’s much more complicated. For a cisgender male to become pregnant, significant physical changes must be made, of course. We’ll stick to female cats for now. I would warn those of you who have brought male familiars to class to keep them well away from this magic; the effects on them wouldn’t be good. Some may become agitated, as well, so do keep a close hold on them.” Pippa turns to her cauldron, which has been simmering on a burner at the front table while she’s been speaking. “To perform this spell, you’ll first need a draught of this potion. Red clover, milk thistle, a pinch of frogspawn." She gives it a last stir, then brings the spoon to her mouth. What looks like a gentle breeze runs over her, ruffling her clothing and her hair slightly. She reaches to the desk behind her for the cage containing the school cat she’s been using for her demonstrations, placing it on the table next to the cauldron. “Now for the spell,” she tells them. “ _Through my power and of my kin, let a new life bloom within_ ” -- and she flicks her fingers at the cat. 

And then everything happens at once. Mildred’s familiar, his fur bristling, gives a yowl and writhes out of Mildred’s arms. Mildred gives a scream -- “ _Tabby!”_ \-- and dives for him. The cat knocks over both the cauldron of potion and the cage holding the other cat, overturning one and sending the other clattering to the floor, then evades Mildred’s outstretched arms and tears toward the door. Mildred tries to fling herself over the table after him, but ends up sprawled across the desk, directly in the line of Pippa’s spell. And Hecate, who in a flash has seen an image of a pregnant twelve-year-old at Cackle’s Academy and does not relish the idea of sending that letter home to Julie Hubble, lunges for Mildred, shoving her out of the way, and then slips in the potion that’s been spilled. She reels and staggers, and an instant later Pippa’s spell has caught her directly in the chest. 

An appalled silence falls on the classroom. Hecate can hear the potion dripping from the cauldron to the floor. At the front of the class, Pippa’s mouth is wide open, her face white. The children are statues. 

And then Hecate feels it, magic welling up in the center of her, something shifting within. She stands, petrified, feeling it coalesce in her belly. A spark igniting, a seed cracking open. 

She turns and runs for the door. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate is having A Bit of a Time dealing with her accidental impregnation by Pippa. Ada tries to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW: Brief reference to pregnancy termination.

When Ada hears the staccato knock at her door the next morning, she’s snapped the door open before the sound has finished dying away. She’s been waiting for this visit.

“Hecate,” she says, and half-rises, but Hecate’s not looking at her. Her gaze is trained on the ground and she’s moving very slowly and very stiffly, her posture and carriage even more rigid than usual. She looks as though she’s afraid of shattering into fragments if she relaxes her hold on herself for a second. 

“You’ve heard?” she says. 

“Yes,” Ada tells her. Hecate appears to be trying to sink into the chair before Ada’s desk without bending anything but her knees. 

“Who told you?”

No sense in lying. “Pippa stopped by.”

An abrupt, congested noise from Hecate. “Of course.”

“She also told me,” Ada says neutrally, “that she attempted to follow you to your room, to talk to you. She said you’d set up a barrier outside the door to your room, and that when she tried to knock she got quite an electric shock.” 

Hecate glances up at this, and Ada had thought she’d known the full range of Hecate’s scowls, but this is something else again, a look like a whipcrack, eyes burning and strange. “Well. She’s not the only one who received  _ quite a shock _ yesterday.”

Ada sighs, relieved when Hecate drops her eyes again. “Hecate,” she says, “I can’t… begin to convey how sorry I am about all of this. It’s entirely my fault.”

A withering look. “I rather think Pippa Pentangle carries some of the blame. And,” she adds as an afterthought, “Mildred Hubble.” 

“No, Hecate. It was I who approved her showing that spell to a class of first-years, knowing how their familiars might react, knowing --”

“Enough.” Another flare of heat from Hecate’s eyes, and then it’s gone. “This is not what I came here to discuss.”

“I’m sorry,” Ada says. Then, gently, “What did you come here to discuss?”

Hecate’s silent for a long time, eyes down, hands twisting together in her lap. Ada waits her out.

Finally she speaks, in a low voice. “I suppose I was wondering if you knew of a spell that would… hide a pregnancy.”

“Hide it?”

“To hide --” Hecate gestures at her stomach vaguely, then clenches her hand into a fist and drives it back into her lap. “To hide any visual sign of what’s… happening.”

Ada shakes her head. “Nothing like that. The best I could offer would be to end the pregnancy.”

Hecate goes very still. “Meaning what?”

“Oh, come now, Hecate,” Ada says, as gently as she can. “You know what that means.”

Another long silence. 

“Is that what you want?” Ada asks, carefully. 

Finally Hecate speaks, voice very low. “No,” she says. “That is not what I want.” 

“Ah.” The understanding of what she’s saying washes over them both; Ada’s expression dissolves into a smile. “Then let me be the first to congratulate you --”

Hecate shakes her head. “Please -- don’t. We’re not at the congratulations stage yet.” 

“Of course.” Ada wants to ask what stage they are at, then, but she doubts Hecate has an answer to that. Instead she says, “Forgive me if it’s an intrusion, but -- why worry about hiding the pregnancy? When a classroom full of first-years witnessed --”

“That is  _ exactly _ why,” Hecate spits viciously, suddenly all but snarling the words. “The most personal, the most  _ private _ moment of my life, and I’d a classroom of  _ children _ gawping at me as it happened. And Pippa -- I --” She’s becoming incoherent and Ada can see that she knows it, can see it’s only making her frustration worse. “That it should be Pippa Pentangle, of all people in the world! Standing there like that -- feeling that -- and knowing they could  _ see _ \-- “ Then her face closes like a slammed door and she’s back to crushing her fingers together in her lap again, as though she’s grinding the memory to powder.

Ada aches to reach across the desk, to take Hecate’s hands in her own, but she knows she can’t. Instead, she says, “I don’t suppose we’re getting ahead of ourselves here? I mean, there’s no chance the spell failed to work?”

Hecate shakes her head, briefly. “I… feel her.”

“Her?”

“The child.” Hecate is holding herself very rigid again, her voice level and toneless on the surface, but something is moving deeper down. “I could feel it when it happened -- I knew -- but then last night, when I was alone, I had to be sure, and I… reached in. I…” She closes her eyes, fighting for control. “I can feel her. It’s a pulsing, an energy, a life -- shapeless and voiceless, but a life nevertheless. And it’s bound up with me. She is. I… know her.”

“You’re certain it’s a girl, already?” Ada says, surprised. “For most witches, it’s a little later on --”

Hecate gives another shake of her head. “I know her,” she repeats. 

Now her hands are clasped together across her stomach. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes again, seems to be grounding herself. Finding herself in the life within her. Ada closes her own eyes briefly against the anxiety burgeoning within her chest, the need to help Hecate into a better place, and the knowledge that there may be very little indeed that she can do for her. 

They sit there for a while like that, Hecate with eyes shut and hands resting on her stomach, Ada staring at a point just at the edge of the desk and wondering what on earth she can do to make any of this better. Finally she decides that, as they’ll have to do this part sooner or later, it might as well be sooner. “And Pippa?” she says. 

That dangerous whipcrack look is back again. “I’ve no interest in having her involved in any of this at all.”

“But she is a part of it. You can’t deny that.” 

Hecate’s glare says,  _ Watch me. _

“I should note that when she came here last night, she hadn’t simply tried to knock on your door once, been shocked, and given up. She had spent -- I don’t even know how long, at least a half an hour -- trying to break down that spell, or break through it. She was still shaking from the reaction to it. Hecate, she’s desperate to see you.” 

“And I’m desperate to go back twenty-four hours, to a time when this hadn’t happened. Don’t you understand, Ada?” Hecate’s eyes are wide and dark, anger and supplication mingled in them. “I had built a life for myself. I’m perfectly well aware that it would seem narrow, even pitiful, to many people, but it’s what I’d built. I was at home in this castle, in myself.” Ada isn’t at all sure that that last bit is true, but Hecate’s still talking. “Now, all of a sudden, everything I trained myself to be and think and want has been turned on its head. But then again,” she says acidly, “Pippa’s done that to me before.”

“I never knew the rights of what happened between the two of you,” Ada says quietly. 

“Yes, well. Nor did I.”

“You seemed so well suited --”

“I am not interested in talking about Pippa Pentangle right now!” Hecate is on her feet now, eyes blazing. Ada stares at her, shocked at the depth of her fury.  _ Oh Hecate.  _

Finally she says, “There are certain kinds of magic that can’t be tampered with or resisted. Kinds of magic that we must take as we find them, and accept for what they are. Pippa’s connection with that life inside you is one such, Hecate. You need to… get your head around that.”

Hecate shakes her head. “I can’t deal with Pippa Pentangle right now. I won’t. I do have a choice. This is mine.” 

“Oh, my dear.” Hecate looks up, startled, at the endearment. Ada’s face is wry but kind, so kind. “You always do make things so much more difficult on yourself than they need be.” 

Hecate freezes, seems to be unsure how much offense to take to that. After a minute her shoulders slump and she turns away. 

“I am here for anything you need, Hecate,” Ada says to her back. “Any support Cackle’s can offer --”

“Thank you.” Hecate gives a short nod, then sweeps her fingers up in the familiar gesture to transport herself. Ada stares at her desk, thinking hard. 

_ I must get her to see Pippa, _ she thinks.  _ And soon _ . 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate lets Pippa in a bit.

Hecate spends the next three days holed up in her room, trying to make sense of what’s happening. She doesn’t go to classes, Ada having personally taken over as potions teacher for the time being. Ada’s also been leaving her meals outside her room, most of which Hecate eats; she wouldn’t have thought she could be hungry at such a time, but her body seems to be carrying on even as her mind is in turmoil. The cliche _eating for two_ occurs to her, but she brushes it off quickly. She’s having trouble getting used to the idea of her own body’s needs and wants being shaped by someone else’s.

Increasingly, as she paces her room, she feels divided from herself. There’s the self she’s known herself to be for decades, currently roiling with fear and anger and shame, and then there’s… the baby. With each day she feels it knitting itself together with her more securely. Soon she’s spending less time pacing and more time simply sitting on a chair or lying in bed, hands on her stomach, directing her energy inward, to the place where she and the life inside her are joined. There’s joy in it, she realizes with a shock, joy in the bond between them, the complete knowledge they each have of the other. 

And the more time she spends with it, the more she can feel Pippa there, as well. She’s been ignoring Pippa -- turned off her maglet and put her mirror in a closet, muffling its sounds by wrapping it in a bath towel -- but now, inside her, she can feel Pippa pulsing in the new life. She doesn’t want it to be true. She wants a way out, a way for this experience to be hers and hers alone. But there it is. 

And she’s startled, and more than a little annoyed at herself, to find how her anger at Pippa is becoming attenuated as she bonds more with the child, this part-Pippa child. At the beginning she’d been sure she could never forgive Pippa for doing this to her, but the feeling of Pippa’s magic growing within her, the connection between the two of them that it implies… it so strongly reminds her of the two of them decades ago, casting spells together and blending their magic, feeling and learning each other in its mingling. It’s a jolt when she realizes she _misses_ Pippa, misses those old moments between them -- and even misses her now, in her ridiculous shocking-pink dresses and bejeweled hat, teaching her ludicrous “modern magic” with that smile, that assurance, that voice. She spends a good deal of time trying to push these feelings down, afraid of where she’ll end up if she lets them flourish. It keeps her away from her mirror and her maglet. She’ll have to talk to Pippa sometime, but not yet. _I’m not ready_ , she tells herself. _There is time yet._

It’s a conversation between Ada and Dimity Drill that changes her mind. 

She’s left her room for the first time in days, planning to go to the library to read up on magical pregnancies; she wants to know what to expect, to know precisely how this works, wants to see this out-of-control situation neatly contained in dry, clinical prose. She takes down the barrier she’s set around her room and prepares to transport herself to the library, but Ada’s and Dimity’s voices float down the hall to her; they’re carrying on a conversation around the corner. A conversation, she realizes, about her. 

“So, any progress with the old battleaxe?” Dimity asks in a laughing tone. 

“Dimity,” Ada protests. “Really.”

“Sorry, Miss Cackle. Any progress with HB and Pippa Pentangle, then?”

Hecate steadies herself against the wall briefly. That Dimity Drill should think she has a right to any information about Hecate’s situation at all, let alone --

But Ada is answering her. Ada! “None at all,” she says, and her voice is exhausted. “Pippa’s been mirroring me every day. Hecate is still ignoring her, I’m afraid.”

“Well, she can’t do that forever. I don’t suppose there’s any spellwork that might push them farther along?”

“None that I can think of, and I’ve been trying. I don’t want to do anything that takes too much autonomy from either of them, you see. Hecate deserves time and space to process this.”

“But Miss Pentangle deserves to be a part of it.”

“I know,” Ada says heavily. Then she gives a small, rueful laugh. “I’ve considered everything, up to and including a friendship trap.”

“A friendship trap?” Dimity starts laughing. “That would be one way. Though it wouldn’t quite be a _friendship_ trap for the two of them, would it? I mean to say --”

Hecate has heard enough. Ears ringing, she retreats back into her room and closes the door. She slumps against it, unable to think anything for a moment but _They know. If Dimity knows, all of them know. What’s between Pippa and me._

She feels violated, shamed to the ground. Memories rise in her unbidden, memories of their time as schoolgirls at Cackle’s. How her heart beat faster every time Pippa said her name, how any room she entered seemed to fill with sunlight. The feeling of hugging Pippa and feeling her heart beat against Hecate’s chest. And how much more she’d wanted. Wanted to reach a hand up and trace a finger over Pippa’s cheekbone, looking deep into her eyes. To feel Pippa’s hands in her hair. To lean in slowly, so slowly, until their lips touched -- 

“No,” Hecate says out loud. “Nothing like that. We share this child. Nothing more.” The words sound entirely false in the close atmosphere of her quarters, but she needs to believe them if she’s going to contact Pippa. And if she’s not going to risk Ada putting a friendship trap on the two of them, she needs to do that now. Deep down she doubts that Ada would ever do such a thing to her, but the idea of it is the push that gets her to the closet door, anyway.

She takes the mirror out of her closet slowly, forcing her limbs through air that suddenly feels like treacle. She unwraps the mirror and lays it on her bed, taking deep breaths. _It’s perfectly all right_ , she tells herself. _A simple mirror call. Not worth all this stress._

Finally she makes herself speak. “Pippa Pentangle,” she says. Immediately her own image in the mirror dissolves, and the mirror shows swirling mist for a moment, then comes into focus again. Pippa’s face is staring at her out of the mirror, her eyes -- what is that look in her eyes? An intensity bordering on mania. “Hecate!” she says, and then -- Hecate can’t understand it -- turns away from the mirror for a moment. “Excuse me. I’ve an important call to take.” Then she picks the mirror up, and Hecate has a quick panning view of two witches and a wizard seated before the desk before Pippa’s dashed out of the room and slammed the door behind her. “Hecate,” she says again, breathless. 

“Really, you needn’t have left your meeting,” Hecate says, a little tartly. “You needn’t have brought your mirror to the meeting at all. We certainly can --”

“Have you taken down the barrier around your room?” Pippa asks. 

“Yes, but --”

The mirror suddenly gives a view of the ceiling, and an instant later Pippa has materialized in Hecate’s room.

Hecate is not at all sure that she’s ready for this. “Who was that that you were meeting with?” she asks. “They’ll be expecting you back.” 

“Donors, and they can wait.” Pippa takes a half a step forward, eyes glistening, and then stops in her tracks. The moment stretches out awkwardly. Finally Pippa bows her head and touches her hand to her forehead. “Well met, Hecate.” 

Slowly, Hecate returns the gesture. “Well met.”

“Hecate, I -- I’m so sorry, I don’t even know where to begin.” Pippa’s brown eyes are intent on Hecate’s face, darting over Hecate’s features, looking for heaven knows what. “I suppose I should begin with an apology. An apology for doing this. I never intended --”

“I know,” Hecate says stiffly. “Your… apology is appreciated.”

“And I need to know -- oh, Hic--” She cuts herself off abruptly. “Oh, Hecate,” she says instead, unease in her tone; both of them know what she had been about to say. “How are you? Are you all right?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose.” Hecate is fighting down the urge to snap at Pippa; part of her thinks that Pippa deserves it, but there’s much more of her that’s still feeling the two of them meshed together in the life of the child within her right now, and she doesn’t want to be fighting. But she can’t seem to bring herself out of this stiff, hard manner. It’s not new to her, but it’s seldom been less appropriate. 

“That’s… good?” Pippa says. 

Hecate struggles to form her mouth around kinder words. “It isn’t all bad,” she says in a moment. “I… am adjusting.’ 

Suddenly Pippa’s eyes, which have been sparkling since she came here, overflow. “I’m sorry,” she says, through her tears. “I don’t mean to --”

With no conscious intent at all, Hecate’s taken one step forward, then another. And before she knows what she’s doing she’s taken Pippa in her arms. “Shh,” she whispers. “Shh.” After a second of shock, Pippa clings to her like a piece of driftwood in the ocean. 

It’s at least five minutes before Pippa loosens her hold on Hecate. Hecate steps back immediately. “Oh, Hiccup,” she says, not bothering to cut off the endearment this time. “I’ve… it’s been so long.” 

Hecate has absolutely no desire to follow that conversational trail. “The baby,” she says instead, and Pippa’s face sets into different lines. “I called you because of the baby.”

Pippa wipes her eyes, tries to compose herself. “Thank you,” she says. And then, with eyes full of wonder, “So there really is a baby.” 

Hecate struggles for a long time to bring herself to speak the words she knows she needs to say. Finally she says, with difficulty, “Our baby.” 

Pippa’s eyes widen at the implications of that.

“Surely you knew that,” Hecate says, severity creeping back into her tone. “ _Through my power and of my kin –_ "

Pippa continues the line. “Yes -- _let a new life bl--”_

“Stop!” Hecate cries. “I don’t want twins!”

Pippa’s eyes catch Hecate’s, and then they’re laughing. 

“So, yes,” Hecate says finally. “We’ll be sharing this.”

She hates how her heart beats faster as Pippa’s eyes light up, just as it did so many years ago.

“There are some conditions,” she says, before she can get lost in that moment. “I shall not be leaving this castle.”

Pippa’s face is puzzled. “Why?”

 _Because I can’t._ “I don’t wish to discuss my reasons. It is a condition.”

After a second, Pippa nods. “I’ll accept that, with a condition of my own: that you allow me to visit you -- to visit the child -- here.”

“That is why I called you,’ Hecate says, in a tone that even she knows is horribly distant and constrained. She has a fleeting moment of wishing she were someone else, someone who could navigate these waters more easily. Someone who knows how to be open. “I… wish for you to be part of this. Or, rather -- you must be part of this. You already are. I have realized I must… respect that.” 

“Well, thank you,” Pippa says. One of her pink sleeves has rolled up a bit; she fidgets with it with one hand. 

“My second condition,” Hecate says then. “We will keep this relationship --” rolling the _r_ slightly, eager to preserve distance in this particular moment -- "to that of co-parents only. We shall not discuss anything that did, or did not, happen 30 years ago. We will be cordial. We may be friends, in time. We will not --” landing very hard on the _not_ \-- “attempt to make anything more of it.”

Pippa is silent for a long, long time. Finally she says, “Hiccup --”

“No,” Hecate says, looking directly into Pippa’s eyes. “Not Hiccup. Hecate.” 

For a moment Pippa looks like she’s been kicked, and Hecate has a wild impulse to take back everything she’s just said, but then Pippa’s face hardens and the expression in her eyes becomes cool and contained. “Whatever you like,” she says, formally and with just a hint of bite.

Hecate is not going to regret what she’s said. She is not.

“Well, I think that’s all we need,” she tells Pippa brusquely. “If you’d like to set a schedule for when you’ll be returning –"

“How many times a week would you have me?” Pippa says, then winces. Hecate’s jaw locks so hard she almost bites the tip of her tongue. None of this. “I think once a week sounds adequate.”

“Twice,” counters Pippa.

Hecate debates arguing this, decides against it. “Very well. Twice weekly,” she says. “I suppose we should each consult our timetables, and then discuss via mirror the most advantageous times to meet.” Pippa nods. 

“Well, if that’s all --” Hecate says.

“It’s not.” Pippa’s voice is soft, but determined. “Before I go, I would like to --” She pauses, looking for the word. “-- connect with the baby.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” says Hecate. 

In response, Pippa presses her hands against her own stomach. “I want to meet my child. May I -- touch…?”

Hecate has a bad feeling about this. “I don’t see how that’s necessary --” 

“Please.” But it sounds less like a plea than a demand. Hecate struggles to find a way out of or around this moment, but she can’t come up with anything. 

At last she says, “Fine.” She looks around the room, then settles in the couch with room for two. “Come here, then.”

Pippa crosses the room, sits beside her, begins to raise a hand, and then stops. “Would you like to…?”

At the words, a flame-edged image flashes through her mind of what she would really like to do with Pippa’s hands. _That’s done,_ she tells herself, furious at the image, at her traitorous mind. _All of that is done._ “Very well,” she says, somewhat ungraciously, and takes Pippa’s hand, hoping that Pippa can’t feel the blood beating hard through her palm and fingers. Slowly, she guides Pippa’s hand to her abdomen, over her clothing. Pippa closes her eyes and begins to explore with her magic. Soon Hecate is lost in the sensation, in the feeling of herself and Pippa and the baby, together now in the most intimate of ways, the three of them flowing into and out of one another like the waters of the sea. It lasts for a long time. No matter how she tries, Hecate can’t bring herself to want it to end. 

Finally Pippa raises her head and moves her hand away. “She’s in there,” she says, voice husky, tear tracks down her face once more. 

Hecate nods, once. “She is,” she says. There’s a moment of silence.

“So!” Pippa says then, affecting a veneer of brightness. “I’ll just… be on my way, then.”

“I shall contact you via maglet with my schedule,” Hecate says. 

“Smashing. Well, I really must go. We’ll speak soon.” And she’s dissolved. 

Hecate sits back down again, not yet recovered from the sensation of Pippa’s magic probing within her. She tries reaching in to the baby again, but all of a sudden it feels rather lonely. “Nonsense,” she says out loud. “Whatever the baby needs, _I_ have no need of Pippa Pentangle.”

Even the air of her room seems to take on a mocking feel at that. 

“Nonsense,” she says again, and strides out of the room. She may as well head to the dining hall, get that over with.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pippa has some news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Siân for her Britpicking, editorial thoughts, and support! <3

It’s clear to Hecate within approximately five minutes of her conversation with Pippa that the idea of letting Pippa in, trusting to herself to keep the relationship a dispassionate friendship by determination alone, was the worst idea of her life. Unfortunately, that’s five minutes too late. 

She’d let lapse, over the years, the memory of what Pippa does to her. How the air seems to shimmer with heat when Hecate thinks of her, every pore prickling with a charge of energy she can’t name. How her heart reacts when she sees Pippa’s face -- not the conventional skipping of a beat, but a whole medley of quick, stuttering fits and jumps. How the lightest brush with one pink sleeve sets her nerves on high alert, and every touch of Pippa’s skin stays branded into her own. The sound of her voice, the lilt of her laugh… Hecate remembers now why, in the years after their falling out (of course there was no “falling out,” Hecate froze Pippa out and she knows it, but there are some euphemisms that are necessary to get her through the day) she’d considered using forgetting powder to lose the memory of Pippa and everything she does to Hecate. And she’s remembering, even more reluctantly, why she could never quite bring herself to do it, couldn’t bear to put the memory of this agonizing sweetness beyond retrieval. 

And this time, of course, there’s the baby. If Hecate could barely deal with Pippa before, before they were joined in this completely irreversible way, she can’t deal with her at all now. 

_ There’s nothing between us but the child _ , she tries to tell herself.  _ There is nothing else that matters. Nothing else I need to bother myself with. All the rest -- _

_ All the rest of what? _

The voice inside her goes silent on that, but it’s a sly, stealthy silence. The fact is, she knows full well. 

Pippa has been mirroring Hecate most nights. Hecate expected this to be terribly awkward, but Pippa has a way of dispelling awkwardness, even when Hecate knows perfectly well she herself is being stiff and wooden and awful. Pippa does ask about the baby each time they speak, but she seems to be more concerned, for now, with bringing Hecate closer to her -- so they’ll be on better terms as co-parents, Hecate supposes. They chat about ordinary happenings at school: the little bumps in the road that Pippa encounters as headmistress, the difficulties posed by some students and the endearing quirks of others. Hecate tells Pippa, admittedly somewhat obliquely, about the ways that the students and staff at Cackle’s have responded to her pregnancy -- the students’ wide eyes and occasional giggles (Hecate leaves out just how hard she comes down on the gigglers; Pippa’s always thought she was too stern a disciplinarian), Dimity Drill’s brisk positivity, Ada’s steadfast support. It’s hard for her to speak much about it, but Pippa knows when and how to tactfully change the subject, for which Hecate is grateful. Pippa has trouble with young witches and wizards canoodling in the hallways at Pentangle’s. Hecate thinks she’s startled a few young witches doing some canoodling of their own, but she doesn’t mention it. She’s decided that that subject is verboten. 

_ Is that really the best path you can find for yourself, Hecate? Pretending that it doesn’t exist at all, that no girl or woman has ever -- _

_ Silence. _

And Pippa’s visits. Each time Pippa’s been to Cackle’s Hecate finds herself awake half the night, reliving it and hating herself for it. Pippa has always been generous with physical touch around Hecate -- a brief touch to her elbow when she leans in to say something in a confidential tone, a brushing of her knee as they sit close together. A hug goodbye. A kiss on the cheek. Ridiculously, a tap of Hecate’s nose. Hecate comes very close to telling Pippa to stop it several times, but she can’t quite form the words. But she carries the memory of each and every touch, no matter how casual, no matter how light, to bed with her at night. After she’s wakened the third time from a dream whose memory sets her cheeks afire and other parts of her throbbing, she starts using a potion for dreamless sleep each night that Pippa comes by.  _ I’ve no time or energy for any of that,  _ she tells herself.  _ A relief to have it out of the way. Unquestionably. _

(The response she gets there does not come from her mind, but from her body, and she’s not sure how to silence that.)

Yet it’s the baby that brings them closest, a closeness that terrifies Hecate. Pippa continues to spend a period at the end of each of her visits with a hand on Hecate’s abdomen, reaching out with her magic. Hecate is helpless to keep herself from becoming entwined in this, and the bond that the three of them share becomes firmer and more finely developed each time. Hecate never knew it was possible to know another human being as completely as she knows the child within her, but as the weeks wear on she begins to feel that she knows Pippa almost as fully as she does the baby, and she’s horror-struck at the idea that that likely means that Pippa is coming to know Hecate that thoroughly as well. Hecate has never shared this much of herself with anyone. There are very few people she’s willing to share any of herself with at all. To have every boundary she’s ever set for herself set at naught is profoundly frightening. 

She begins to be “out of the room” more often when Pippa mirrors her. When they do speak she’s short and abrupt, ending the conversations after five or ten minutes. No matter that she spends every moment that they’re  _ not  _ talking imagining the conversations they might have had; the point is to send a signal to Pippa. When Pippa visits Hecate is grim and, in all honesty, sulky. All that she can think is that every laugh they share, every smile, every time she finds her eyes locked on Pippa’s or sees a loose strand of blonde hair and wants to tuck it behind her ear, is one more skidding step closer to sliding completely out of control. 

And still, for every brief moment in which she undermines the growing connection between them, for every look of hurt and confusion that flits briefly over Pippa’s face as she registers that new distance, they’re knit together twice as strongly every time Pippa rests her hand on Hecate’s stomach. And so Hecate begins to cut those moments short as well, to dodge them whenever she can find even the flimsiest excuse. She can see Pippa wants to fight her there, but she also knows Pippa would never lay a hand on her without her consent. She’s banking on Pippa treating her decently even as she knows, in her heart, that she’s not returning the favor. She tells herself that it’s justified if it will just quiet the swirling in her head for one moment. It doesn’t work, but she’s not sure what else to do, so she carries on. 

And then it all blows up. 

It’s a Tuesday, a regular night for Pippa’s visit. The two of them are sitting in Hecate’s room -- Pippa on the comfortable sofa that seats two, Hecate in a straight-backed wooden chair that sets her own back aching. She’s been very quiet, despite Pippa’s valiant attempts at carrying on a normal conversation. There’s something different about Pippa tonight, though, an insistence on making eye contact, holding Hecate’s gaze, forcing her to pay attention. The reason is clear soon enough. 

“I have some rather big news,” Pippa says after a few minutes, somehow sounding both bashful and determined.

“Hmm?” Hecate says, eyes fixed on the pink nails of Pippa’s hand against the upholstered arm of the couch. 

“Well. As it turns out, Miss Bat is set to retire soon.”

Hecate wonders why this is big news. “I’m not surprised. Ada has felt that that was overdue for a while.”

“Yes. Well. Cackle’s will need a replacement.”

_ Oh no. Oh, no.  _ Hecate snaps her eyes up to Pippa’s face, hoping against hope that she’s misunderstanding Pippa’s meaning. But --

“Ada’s offered me the job, Hecate,” Pippa says, her eyes anxious, but hopeful. “I… thought I’d take it.”

“And leave Pentangle’s?” Hecate says in a strangled voice. “Your students need you.”

“My deputy head will be just as capable --”

“No one could be as capable as you, Pippa.” Hecate’s startled at the truth that this bizarre moment has pulled out of her mouth. Pippa flushes a little.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. But it’s beside the point right now. I look forward to working with the children of Cackle’s on both traditional and modern chanting --”

“You’re leaving the headmistress-ship of your own school to teach  _ modern chanting  _ here _? _ What on earth could be your reason for --”

And suddenly the anger that Hecate knows Pippa has been pushing down for weeks blazes to the surface. “You know the reason perfectly well, Hecate. How long are we going to play these games?”

“There are no games.” This, at least, is true. What’s happening here couldn’t be farther from a game in Hecate’s mind. 

“Then let me spend time with the child,” Pippa says. “You put me off last time. Let me feel her.”

“She is sleeping right now.” They both know this is an absurdity. The baby is much too young and undeveloped for either sleeping or waking. 

“Hecate, you have  _ no right _ .” It’s very clear to Hecate that this is what’s been simmering under the surface since she herself began to pull away. Nor can she pretend, even to herself, that it's unjustified. “That’s my child. I have a right to --”

“To touch her through my body?” Hecate finds, to her horror, that she’s on the brink of tears. “Do you know how -- how --”  _ How difficult it is for me. How far beyond my boundaries it pushes. How much it makes me want, makes me need --  _

Hecate can say none of this, so she goes back a step. “It is my body,” she says again.

Pippa closes her eyes, and Hecate can see she’s trying to marshal the little bit of patience that she’s got left. “If that’s so… if it’s really too much for you to handle… I have a suggestion.”

Hecate stares at her knees, still too close to tears to risk looking up. 

“We’ll transfer the pregnancy.”

Now Hecate does glance up, truly startled. “Transfer it? Do you mean…”

“It’s very advanced magic indeed, but with your skill and power it should be possible. Let me bear the child. I’ll stay on at Pentangle’s and you can visit whenever you like. You won’t have to worry, then, about me -- touching you.” Pippa can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice on those words. 

“I cannot leave this castle,” Hecate says, before she thinks. “I would not be able to --”

“Nonsense,” Pippa says, with a roll of her eyes. “Just because you’re too set in your ways ever to deviate from your routine -- just because you’ve shut out the world beyond this castle --”

“I  _ can’t. _ ” Hecate is about four seconds away from explaining her reason to Pippa, but sharing that information would send her world crashing down around her ears. No one can know. “I beg of you, Pippa. Don’t ask this of me.” 

“It’s one or the other, Hecate. Either allow me in, or transfer the pregnancy. What’s between you and me -- you’ve made your decision on that, and I’ve nothing to do but accept it.” Pippa is trying so hard to cover the break in her voice. It isn’t working. Still, her voice strengthens again on the next words: “However. You can’t make the decision to keep me from our child.”

_ I won’t, _ Hecate wants to say.  _ I won’t shut you out anymore. I promise _ . But just imagining the words has thrown Hecate’s mind into turmoil. She thinks that if Pippa had any idea how much it terrifies Hecate to “allow her in,” she would never ask it… but perhaps, after all, she would. Not for her own sake, but for the child. 

For a moment Hecate lets herself consider it, transferring the pregnancy. No swelling, no discomfort, no nausea, no moodiness. No need to let Pippa, or anyone else, in. No more fear. Everything back the way it was. 

And yet she hears herself whisper “No.” 

“No…?”

“I -- can’t transfer the pregnancy. It is -- she’s part of me.”

“And of me.” 

“But -- I --” Hecate can find no words to explain what carrying this child means to her. She doesn’t understand it herself. “No,” she says again.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Pippa’s eyes are shining with tears now.

Hecate allows herself a fraction of a second of silence. She knows Pippa won’t give her any more than that.

Then she pushes herself up on the arms of her chair, back straight as a yardstick, setting her face in carved lines. “Come to Cackle’s,” she says. “Teach your modern chanting. Visit with me -- or with her. I shall not stop you.”

Pippa’s eyes widen. “You’re sure?”

“Entirely.” Hecate stands, smoothing out her skirt, flicking up her collar. “End of term is approaching. I assume you’ll be beginning at the start of next.”

“Yes,” Pippa says, still looking lost. 

“Fine. Now, if you don’t mind, I have something rather important to do this evening. I shall mirror you tomorrow.” 

For a split second Pippa looks like she wants to argue on this, but then the fire in her eyes is replaced with exhaustion, and she nods. “I’ll leave you. For now,” she says. 

“Thank you.” Hecate watches Pippa narrowly as she disappears. No cheek-kiss this time, no nose-tap. In a way Hecate is sad about this. This would have been her last chance to appreciate that. 

She flicks her fingers upward and transfers to the potions lab. She locks the doors with a gesture, then turns to the shelves. She gathers the ingredients that she will need. Combines them in her cauldron. Lights the flame. Stirs the potion as it bubbles. When it’s ready, she bends to breathe in the vapor, then dips a goblet in and drains it. A feeling like a spreading scrim of ice runs over her body. 

For a moment she wonders if she can really do this. Cut out this part of herself. For years she's considered it. Each time she's decided it's too much to lose. 

But she's out of options now. This is it. 

She draws herself up to her full height, then says:

_Rushing blood and swirling mind,_  
_Lust and obsession thus entwined,_  
_Such complications now shall cease --_  
_Turn clear and clean, a soul at peace._  
_Let this infatuation end._  
_Let Pippa be simply a friend._

With a hand-wave she vanishes the rest of the potion, then transfers back to her bedroom. She lies on the bed for a long time, hands on her stomach, feeling the child move within her. She does not think of Pippa.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate's just cast a spell to end her infatuation with Pippa. It doesn't seem to have worked quite as she'd anticipated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: This had been G-rated through Chapter 4, but it's jumped to M now. Probably will hit E before it's done, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. :)

The spell doesn’t work quite as Hecate intended. 

She counts it a victory when she manages the rest of the evening without finding herself caught in that grinding, stomach-churning morass of obsession over Pippa -- how much she wants Pippa, how frightened she is of how much she wants Pippa. But when she falls asleep, she dreams of Pippa, a dream quite as sensual and erotic as any she’s ever had. She wakes in the middle of the night, her body aching with unrelieved desire, and lies there for a moment, processing slowly. Something feels different tonight, but it’s a little hard to put her finger on when her mind’s clouded by lust. Nor does it seem terribly important to pinpoint it right now. 

Without her really considering it, she finds her hand stealing between her legs. She supposes she might as well take care of herself. It’s not something she’s allowed herself to do very often -- she’s devised a spell to tamp down physical arousal that she typically makes use of in circumstances like these -- but it’s hard to see what the harm could be, really. And if she thinks of Pippa as she does it -- pictures Pippa here with her, her blonde hair strewn across Hecate’s pillow, her naked body glistening with sweat, biting her lip, writhing and rising up into Hecate’s touch, crying out her orgasm -- what harm can there be in that, either? What harm in a little fantasy? 

Some time later, sated, Hecate’s drifting off to sleep when it occurs to her: _The guilt. That’s what’s missing. The guilt is gone._

 __It is extremely hard to regret its passing.

In the morning she’s embarrassed at the memory of the night, but there’s not much to be done about it and not much sense in worrying. She goes about her day -- teaching her classes, eating in the dining hall with the other teachers, reading in the library for a bit -- and as the day wears on, she begins to be more aware both of what exactly has changed with the potion she drank and of what hasn’t changed. She’s still thinking of Pippa, still longing for her presence, her voice, her touch, but she’s lost track of why it was that she ever thought that that longing required the kind of fear and shame that she’s associated with it for the past thirty years. If she wants to be around Pippa, wants to be close to her, even if she wants the two of them to be more than friends, why not pursue it? It’s fairly clear at this point that Pippa would not be averse.

 _I can’t_ , she tries to tell herself. _I’m confined to the castle_.

\--Pippa will be living in the castle soon as well. 

_If we were to try it -- being together -- and it failed, it would ruin both our lives, not to mention our daughter’s._

___\--_ And would that really be worse than the situation you are in now? The pain you’re in now, both of you? Which is likelier to ruin things for your daughter?

_Whenever I’ve let myself give in to desire, disaster has resulted._

___\--_ Why should one mistake made out of loneliness thirty years ago mean that you should subject yourself to chronic loneliness for the rest of your life? What “disaster'' is likely to occur now?

___It’s against the Witches’ Code._

___\--_ Where in the world did that idea even come from? 

Suddenly, Hecate can’t make sense of the person that she has been for the last thirty years. Afraid to let herself care for anyone, with the sole exception of Ada; afraid to let herself enjoy anything; afraid to dance or sing or laugh or come or love. Afraid to do anything at all that’s not spelled out explicitly in the dry lines of the Witches’ Code.

This must be a result of the potion she took, but for the life of her she can’t understand why it’s acting this way. How could a potion meant to end her infatuation with Pippa lead to her wanting to throw away every value and principle she’s held in her entire adult life in favor of taking a wild shot at romance? She must have brewed it improperly. Which means what’s happening right now is improper. She must rein it in. 

It's only that it is -- strange, how it can feel so right. 

She considers brewing up a reversal potion, but, as she’s unclear as to what exactly went wrong with the original potion, she’s worried that a reversal might malfunction as well. After due consideration, she decides that she’ll just let the potion wear off over time; it won’t last forever, after all. In the meantime, she’ll simply behave normally around Pippa. How hard can that be? Contrary to how she’s been feeling for all of these years, it’s not as though she’s committed murder. And she’s been so rough on Pippa lately -- she’s known it all along, but it’s particularly shaming now that she can’t even understand the reason for it. Pippa deserves better, and Hecate’s in a much better position now to give it to her. 

In a manner of speaking. 

They talk via mirror that night, and Hecate can see that Pippa is a little shocked at the difference in the tone of their call -- shocked and, if Hecate’s honest, delighted, in a way that underscores just how difficult Hecate had been making things until now. It’s so much easier to talk and laugh and chat with Pippa when she’s not terrified that the slightest break in her reserve might mean her defenses could be breached, that everything she’s been repressing might bubble up through a crack. Pippa has been working so hard to keep the two of them on good terms. It’s time for Hecate to meet her halfway. 

The next night is a regularly scheduled night for Pippa to visit. Hecate greets her at the door and considers kissing her cheek as she says hello -- she’s only stopped by the knowledge that Pippa would know for certain that something had changed and would doubtless want to know why and how. Still, she touches Pippa’s hand briefly as she guides her to sit on the sofa, then sits down next to her, and she can tell from Pippa’s face that this is quite unusual enough to make Pippa wonder what’s really happening. 

They chat a bit, but Hecate’s feeling antsy and she has a strange feeling that the baby is too; her energy feels unsettled, somehow. “Would you like to spend time with the baby?” she asks Pippa, after five minutes or so of conversation. “I know I’ve been putting you off on that front.” She adds, somewhat stiffly, “I’m sorry.”

Pippa’s face is so happy -- Hecate realizes she is making Pippa happier than she has done in decades -- but still tinged with surprise, almost astonishment. Hecate senses that Pippa’s already on the verge of asking what’s happened, what’s changed, and it is not a subject she is interested in discussing right now, so she takes Pippa’s hand and lays it flat on her abdomen before any more can be said. Pippa closes her eyes, so Hecate does too, and for a moment they explore together, reaching out to the baby. Even as she revels in the closeness to Pippa, however, Hecate can sense that it’s not quite working, not as it usually does. The baby still seems restless, unable or unwilling to settle. Pippa’s face sets in lines of concentration, and she spreads her fingers wider, almost massaging Hecate’s stomach, trying to grasp after a connection. Hecate does not bother even to pretend to herself that she’s not enjoying that. 

After a moment Pippa sighs and opens her eyes. “It’s different today. I feel I’m not quite connecting with her, somehow.”

Hecate nods. “From all I’ve read, that’s to be expected at times, and more so as the baby grows. As she becomes more her own person, it can be harder to connect as fully.”

“Already beginning to keep secrets from us,” Pippa says, and laughs. “I wonder who she takes after there.”

Hecate is a little annoyed at this remark, not that she has much of a right to be. “Yes, well,” she says, her tone somewhat tart, and then she softens -- after all, Pippa is not wrong. “I wouldn’t assume she’s keeping secrets yet,” she says. “I think it likelier that she’s simply feeling a little restless.”

“Perhaps it would be easier if --” Pippa begins, and then cuts herself off abruptly. 

Hecate raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Oh -- just something I’d read. Never mind,” Pippa says awkwardly. 

Hecate lets out a quick, amused breath. “I think I know what you’ve read. Very well,” she says.

“Oh, no, I didn’t --” Pippa breaks off, eyes wide, as Hecate begins to undo the clasp on her belt. “Hecate, I _really_ don’t want to --”

“Touch my stomach?” Hecate inquires, hands pausing for a moment. “As you know, skin-to-skin contact should aid the connection.”

“I just don’t want to… make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable,” Hecate assures her.

“Hecate, what --” But Hecate’s untucked her blouse and guided Pippa’s hand under it, to her bare abdomen. Pippa sucks in a hiss of breath and closes her eyes. So does Hecate. 

The books were right; it is far easier for Pippa to connect with the baby when she’s in direct contact with Hecate’s skin. But for Hecate, at any rate, the connection with the baby is being drowned out by the flood of sensation and of emotion that Pippa’s hand on her bare stomach brings. She holds herself rigid, already feeling a purring between her legs, a spot to which Pippa’s hand is so close right now. Her breathing is coming more quickly. She notices, as though in a dream, that Pippa’s is too. 

Pippa flexes her fingers very slightly, her fingertips sliding a millimeter or two along Hecate’s abdomen, nails scraping so, so slightly across Hecate’s skin. Now Hecate knows Pippa can feel as well as hear how fast her breath is coming, and how shallowly. Slowly, Hecate opens her eyes. Pippa’s eyes are still closed; Hecate traces Pippa’s features with her gaze, noting the high flush in her cheeks, the slight distortion of her throat as she swallows visibly. Then Pippa’s eyes open as well, and their gazes are locked together. Wonder in Pippa’s eyes; a distinct challenge in Hecate’s. 

“Pippa,” Hecate whispers, and places her hand over Pippa’s. All thoughts of the baby put aside now, she moves Pippa’s hand, with maddening slowness, from her abdomen to her waist. She raises her other hand, lays it lightly along Pippa’s cheek. Pippa’s breath is uneven now, almost gasping. Hecate closes her eyes again and leans in. Time has slowed to a crawl, her senses heightened; she can hear the near-inaudible whisper of Pippa’s dress against the sofa as she shifts her weight forward. Hecate slides her hand over Pippa’s cheek and ear and tangles it in her hair, guiding Pippa toward her. Heat explodes outward as their lips meet. 

For one second, one endless second, their lips move against each other, exploring, intensifying the kiss. One second, and Hecate’s more than ready to fling herself into Pippa’s lap, part Pippa’s lips with her tongue and delve in deeply, finding out, at last, what they can be together -- 

\-- and then Pippa pulls away. “Hecate,” she says, and Hecate can’t parse out what’s in her tone at all, though she thinks “anguish” must be far too melodramatic a term. “Please look at me.”

Hecate opens her eyes. Pippa’s face is nakedly pleading. 

“Hecate. What’s happening?”

Primness rushes back to Hecate, carried on the tide of embarrassment that’s hitting her right now. “I would have thought that was fairly self-explanatory,” she says, her tone stilted.

“Something’s changed. You’ve changed. What’s happened?”

Hecate considers telling her the full truth, finds herself reeling away from the idea. “I… simply felt that I have not been treating you with the… consideration you deserve. I thought it was time that I… changed my tune.”

“It’s a change in tune, all right.” Pippa puffs out a tiny laugh, eyes closed, shaking her head. “Hecate, I… as much as I…” She fumbles, stops, tries to collect herself. “As much as I… would like…” She shakes her head hard, clearly trying to steer herself onto a different track. “You don’t seem yourself, Hecate,” she says at last. 

_Isn’t this better than myself?_ Hecate thinks. Her whole body still aches to pull Pippa back in, kiss her breathless, let her hands roam, feel Pippa move under her touch. At the same time, though, part of her seems to be beginning to gain a bit of distance on the situation, enough distance to read it as an outsider would: she took a potion that went wrong and it’s made her attempt to seduce Pippa. This is not an unprecedented situation. Plenty of witches have stumbled into these marshes. It is silly and sordid and not in the least unique. Hecate has been taking this experience as a personal revolution, some sort of epiphany leading her to cast aside chains that have shackled her for thirty years and pursue what she’s wanted so desperately all along, and apparently all that’s really happened is that she accidentally brewed herself a love potion. 

“I…” She has literally no idea where to begin. “I am sorry,” she says at last, feeling the scraping of gravel in the words. “Clearly, I have made a mistake.’

“Oh, Hiccup.” Glancing up at Pippa’s face, Hecate can see she’s near tears. “That isn’t what I -- oh,” she says, clearly frustrated. She stops, draws a long, shaky breath, closes her eyes, seems to be counting to herself. Then she places her palms flat on her knees and opens her eyes, her gaze now steady on Hecate’s.

“It’s only that, if we’re going to do this, I need to know that it’s… real,” she says. “If something has happened to you, some spell, some potion --”

“There was a potion,” Hecate says, dragging each reluctant word out of her mouth. “I… do not believe it worked as intended.” 

Pippa jerks away at that, spins until she’s facing away from Hecate, and buries her face in her hands. Her shoulders are shaking with sobs. 

Hecate takes a long, long time, marshaling her thoughts very carefully. She is going to do this next part properly. No matter what she has done wrong thus far, this part she will get right.

“Pippa,” she says, finally. “I need you to understand something.”

Pippa doesn’t turn. 

“There was a potion. I was trying to... “ One more breath. “I was trying to end things between us. Pippa, for so long…” She feels her way forward, word by word, knowing it is in fact the potion that is allowing her to say these words at all -- which means, if there’s nothing else, there’s one good thing that this potion has done for her. “I have wanted you for so long, Pippa. Since we were schoolgirls. There have been -- complications, and -- well, you know how things have been. Then this pregnancy, and I -- it was too much for me to handle. I tried a potion, a potion to make us simply friends, nothing more. I don’t know what happened. Something went wrong. My feelings haven't changed; it's just that I'm finding myself less... inhibited, I suppose. But, Pippa --” She can feel the weight of each word in her mouth now, the shift in ballast as, one by one, she sets them free. “Nothing that I did tonight is anything that I have not wanted to do for more than thirty years.”

Pippa is still facing away, face in her hands, but her sobs have ceased. She’s stiller than Hecate has ever seen a living human be.

“I know it was wrong,” Hecate says. “I doubt there are words enough in the English language for the apology this would require. Perhaps, in time --”

“Hecate. Could you do me a favor?” Pippa says suddenly. “Talk to Ada.”

“I -- _what?_ ” Hecate cannot imagine what Ada could possibly have to do with this situation, and it’s rather a splat of a landing in the emotional state she’s in right now. 

“Talk to Ada. Ask her about this. Talk to Ada, and then call me. Will you do that?”

“I… suppose I shall have to,” Hecate says, bewildered and far from entirely pleased. 

Pippa nods, and stands up. “I’ll talk to you soon,” she says. “Very soon. Please -- call me.” A quick gesture, and she’s gone. 

_Talk to Ada._ What on earth?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pippa told Hecate to ask Ada about the "anti-infatuation" spell she cast. Accordingly, Hecate asks. The answer isn't quite what she was expecting.

Once Hecate’s transferred herself down to Ada’s office, she finds Ada isn’t there at the moment. Which is fine. She’ll simply take a seat and wait for her return. It isn’t, after all, any sort of emergency. No need to track her down with a locating spell, let alone transfer her back here. She may be doing something important. Hecate’s quite capable of waiting for her return.

Thirty seconds later a startled Ada is behind her desk, blinking away the visual distortion of transference. ”Hecate?” she says. “What --” She catches sight of the look on Hecate’s face. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Hecate says, unconvincingly. “I... have a question to ask you, that’s all.”

Ada sits down at her desk and gestures to the chair across from her. Hecate forces herself to sit, her arms crossed in front of her as though she’s hugging herself. “I --” She finds she has no idea how to begin. “Pippa said I should talk to you.”

Ada lifts an eyebrow and waits, but Hecate seems to have run out of words. Finally she says, gently, “About what?”

Hecate closes her eyes. Ada gives her a minute, then, with ostentatious casualness, stands up and moves across the room. “Why don’t I just water the plants,” she says pleasantly. Perhaps it will be easier for Hecate to speak if Ada’s not staring her down across the desk.

Ada waters her plants, touches their leaves, tests the soil, very deliberately keeping her body half-turned away from Hecate, all the while trying to use her magic to beam comfort to Hecate, a feeling of safety. She notices, in her peripheral vision, that Hecate has taken a position that’s becoming more and more familiar lately, one hand resting against her stomach, seeming to draw strength from her bond with the child within her. Ada guesses that whatever is happening, that child is the reason she’s trying to make herself speak to Ada about it.

Finally she says in a rush, “I seem to have made a mess of a potion I brewed. I don’t understand what’s happening. Pippa told me to come to you. Which I don’t understand either. But...” She trails off.

Ada nods, as if this is all perfectly standard. “I see. What sort of potion?”

“A -- well, it was meant to be a -- an... anti-love potion, I suppose.”

In an instant, everything clears and Ada sees exactly where they are, but she keeps her features neutral -- Hecate needs to be able to tell her what’s happened. “A potion aimed at ending your feelings for Miss Pentangle, I take it,” she says calmly. Hecate nods, a little shame-faced. “So what happened?”

“It... seems not to have worked. I merely meant to put the two of us on a, well, a friendly footing, but it seems that all I’ve lost are my inhibitions.” Ada wonders, a little uneasily, just how much of her inhibitions Hecate’s lost; this could be a rather large mess. But Hecate’s continuing: “Pippa was visiting me just now, and I...” Her cheeks are dark with rising color now. “I -- made an attempt at -- initiating -- a --”

Ada returns her attention to Cordelia’s leaves, but this time Hecate seems to be incapable of finishing her sentence. Finally Ada says, in a tone that she hopes is casual, “I take it you tried to kiss her, or something of that nature.”

Hecate nods, looking unspeakably relieved. Ada doesn’t inquire as to whether it was a kiss or something else of that nature; she has the idea. “And -- may I ask -- how did Pippa respond?”

Hecate sighs. “She knew something was wrong. She asked what had changed, if there was a spell or potion involved, and I told her there was. I was... as honest with her as I could be. And then -- she told me to talk to you, and she transferred back to Pentangle’s.” Hecate looks at Ada, desperation in her eyes. “What’s happening?”

Ada sits back down at her desk, steepling her fingers before her. “Well, I suppose we should go back to the start,” she says, her tone businesslike. “Exactly what potion did you use?”

“A fairly standard draught for the purpose,” Hecate says, striving to match Ada’s tone. “Thistle, rose-cactus spines, eelworm skin.”

“I see. And was there an accompanying spell?”

“Yes. It --” The flush that had beginning to fade from Hecate’s cheeks darkens again. “Yes,” she repeats.

“What was it?”

For a moment Ada thinks she’s going to need to busy herself with her flowers again, but then Hecate begins to recite in a low voice. “ _Rushing blood and swirling mind --”_ She pauses, briefly, cutting her eyes to the side. “ _Desire and obsession thus entwined,”_ she continues eventually. _“Such complications now shall cease / Turn clean and clear, a mind at peace. / Let this infatuation end...”_ Hecate pauses again, her voice trailing off. “ _Let Pippa be simply a friend,”_ she finishes, at last.

“Ah,” Ada says, tone thoughtful, successfully keeping any trace of incredulity off her face -- _oh, Hecate, you thought that would work?_ “Well, as you know, we always do tell our students of the importance of keeping the wording of our spells very specific --”

“I felt that was specific enough,” Hecate says in a strained voice.

“In the main, yes.” Ada’s being charitable there. “But I’m thinking of the line about complications. _Such complications now shall cease --_ that was the wording?” Hecate nods, stiffly. “It seems to me that your relationship with Miss Pentangle has in fact been fraught with complications for some time.” Several decades’ worth of time, in fact.

“Well. That was the point.”

“Ah, but you mistake me.” Ada is picking her way forward very, very carefully; for all their closeness, she’s never had a conversation quite this personal with Hecate before. She wonders if anyone has, since the long-ago days when Hecate stopped being Joy. “I take it you were thinking of your... attraction to Pippa as the source of complications?”

“Well, yes.”

“But the phrase was fairly nonspecific. I hope you’ll forgive me, as an... outsider, for noting that your having feelings for Miss Pentangle does not, in itself, seem to rise to the level of a ‘complication.’ Especially given that it seems fairly clear that your feelings are, well, reciprocated. In itself, that’s really rather straightforward.”

Hecate opens her mouth, then shuts it. She seems frankly bewildered.

“What is it that’s been holding you back from reaching out to her all this time, Hecate?”

“I couldn’t possibly!”

“But why?”

“I -- the confinement --”

“You know I’ve offered, more than once, to speak to the Great Wizard about that --”

“And _you_ know what I’ve told you repeatedly. It should not _be_ ended.”

“Because...?”

“Oh, Ada.” There’s a long pause. “I -- it’s -- not as clear to me as it once was,” she says finally, rather disjointedly. “I suppose I’ve simply felt that I deserved it.”

“Deserved to be confined to this castle for the rest of your life?”

Hecate’s voice is low. “It was a serious crime.”

“But you’ve paid for that. Over and over, for thirty years, you’ve paid for it. And this guilt, this self-hatred -- Hecate, you’ve let it consume you for decades.” Hecate is looking down at her lap now, knotting her hands together fiercely. Ada takes a deep breath.

“I think that’s been the real source of ‘complications’ for you, Hecate. You’re long past the point where that sort of guilt is warranted or useful. You’ve shut Pippa out as you’ve shut everything else out that could give you pleasure or comfort.”

“Except you,” Hecate blurts out suddenly. “You... have been my comfort.”

Ada feels tears start to her eyes. She wishes she could take Hecate’s hand, but the desk is too wide between them. “I’m glad,” she says, her voice a little constricted. She picks up a quill from her desk, turns it over in her hands, studying it carefully. Across the desk, Hecate is silent. “But you see,” Ada says finally, once she feels she’s got a hold on herself, “when you asked for complications to cease, I believe the magic interpreted that rather differently than you intended. When you say you’ve become less ‘inhibited’... haven’t those inhibitions been what was complicating things for you all along? Why should you be eaten up with guilt and fear and self-loathing? Why shouldn’t you be happy?”

Across the desk, Hecate’s eyes are wide. Ada can tell that somehow, in thirty years of experiencing those emotions, Hecate never once questioned them. That Ada is laying before her a vision of a landscape of which she’s never dreamed.

“It is... a lot to take in,” Hecate says finally. Ada worries for a moment that she’s had enough, that she’s going to leave, but though Hecate is studying her lap again, she makes no move to get up. Ada’s wondering how to broach the next subject that she knows they must discuss when Hecate does speak, glancing up at Ada with imploring eyes.

“Still, that was not the whole of the spell,” she says. “The language with regard to _complications_ may not have been as specific as it could have been, but the ending -- _Let this infatuation end / Let Pippa be simply a friend_ \-- surely that’s clearly stated enough for anybody.

“Ah.” Here it comes. Ada takes a deep breath and forces her expression to remain deadpan as she says, “I’m afraid there are some, shall we say, limitations on the efficacy of what you’ve termed ‘anti-love potions.’”

“Limitations?”

“You can indeed use a spell to end an infatuation, or mitigate it. But I’m afraid there’s no spell that can end true love.”

Hecate’s eyes all but pop out of her head.

“True _love --”_ she says finally, in a strangled voice. “When on earth did we get onto the subject of --”

“I’m only telling you what such spells can and cannot do.”

“There must be some other reason -- something --”

“Perhaps I should leave you some space to process this,” Ada says, standing up. “Time to think it over.”

“I’ve never thought of such a thing as being in love with Pippa!”

“Haven’t you?” Ada says, unable to stop herself. Hecate’s look is stunned.

“It is -- I can’t possibly -- you must be mistaken.” In her shock, Hecate says what she means without stopping to think: “How could you know so much about such spells, anyway?”

With tremendous effort, Ada manages to repress a smile. “I did my research on them fairly recently, after Pippa came to me. She’d cast much the same spell you had, you see, and was wondering why it didn’t work.”

Hecate’s mouth drops open.

“I’ll leave you to think,” Ada says gently, and transfers out of the room, leaving a dumbfounded potions mistress behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aware this is a terrible cliffhanger and that this is not the first chapter I have ended on a terrible cliffhanger either. I am genuinely not trying to be awful, I just seem to keep ending up here. XD I am very much hoping to have the next chapter up in the next few days.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate has a decision to make.

Hecate doesn’t remember transferring herself away from Ada’s office, but after a time she finds herself in her own quarters, pacing back and forth. _True love_ \-- the phrase keeps banging around in her mind, sounding more wildly improbable with every moment. A silly, sentimental concept, snatched from the ending of a fairy tale, nothing to do with reality, especially not Hecate’s reality. She has a brief and ludicrous image of herself in a sparkly, puffy pastel dress, gazing wistfully out her tower window, waiting for her True Love to come and begin her life for her. She -- a woman in her forties, tall and dark and angular, coldly severe and rigid and, let us not forget, pregnant -- she’s hardly a plausible heroine for anyone’s romantic drama.

(Of course, this particular romantic drama would have two heroines, not one. An image of Pippa in that same puffy sparkly pastel dress flashes across her mind’s eye, a much less ridiculous image. But, after all, Pippa’s not the one who’s been confined to staring wistfully out a window for the last thirty years.)

 _I’ve never thought of such a thing as being in love with Pippa Pentangle,_ she’d told Ada. Of course, she’d known the instant she’d said it that it wasn’t quite true; when they were teenagers together, before she’d ruined her life so spectacularly and seen their lives diverge so completely, she’d fully believed she was in love with Pippa. It’s unsettling to remember it now, and she’s more than unsettled enough already, but the memory is with her now with uncomfortable immediacy: the welter of emotions she’d lived with, wanting nothing more than to be with Pippa every second of her life, and the stomach-plummeting jealousy of seeing Pippa crowded about by witches who had no use for Hecate and for whom Hecate had had no use. Feeling _it can’t be me, it could never be me, white face and black hair and lanky limbs, next to those golden curls. Those golden girls._ And coming to understand, too, what it would mean if she had _,_ somehow, been the one. The terror of giving herself over to someone who could know her so completely, who could _own_ her so completely. _You have me, now please hold me gently_. Hecate had never known hands gentler than Pippa’s, but even so, the terror wouldn’t calm.

So she’d left the castle, gone out into the ordinary world, looking for something else. And she’d found it. And now, thirty years later, here she is.

She’d believed herself in love with Pippa Pentangle, thirty years ago, but circumstances change, and people change. _True love doesn’t_ , argues a voice in her head, but a larger part of her feels that that’s abysmally foolish. The entire idea is foolishness. And just as well, because if it were real, she’d have to deal with it, and she has no idea how to do that. How to open up, how to let down her guard, how to crack open that hard shell that’s grown so thick around her in the last three decades and reveal something softer within. It’s too much to ask. No one has any right to ask it. 

Hecate wonders, now, what Ada’s talk of _true love_ was even supposed to mean. Some kind of nonsense about soul mates, about pairs who can’t be happy except in each other’s company? Couples who are somehow fated to be together? Hecate is torn between believing that there can’t possibly be any such thing as fate and believing that if it does exist, her fate is clearly to be alone. Forty-three years on this planet have taught her that much about herself. She has a -- a constitutional incapacity for trust and openness and romance. She can’t be in love with Pippa, and if she is Pippa certainly can’t be in love with her, and if Pippa is in love with her it still wouldn’t mean they could make it work. Just in this moment that’s all she can think: she knows herself too well to believe that love is a possibility for her. The potion she made had had her dallying with the idea of romance, but Ada’s words have driven it home to her that what they’re talking about is something long-term -- something permanent, in fact. Something that would define her. And she doesn’t match that definition.

She wonders how she can explain this to Pippa, that true love is most likely a fiction but that even if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter, because she could never make Pippa happy, could never be the kind of partner that Pippa deserves. She’s not built for it. And, after all, Pippa must be able to see that in her. Anybody could see it. Perhaps the conversation will be easier than she’s anticipating. Perhaps --

She stops short as a sudden jolt hits her, and her hands fly to her stomach. It’s a flash of vitality, as though the baby is calling for her attention. It occurs to her that this mess isn’t just about her or even just about her and Pippa. That there’s a third party here that needs to be taken into account.

“What do you think?” she whispers, and feels an answering pulse of energy, wordless but somehow perfectly clear nonetheless.

“I’m too old,” she says aloud. “Too old, too set in my ways. I don’t know how to be with someone. I’d ruin everything --”

The next pulse is much stronger, cutting straight through her rationalizations. Caught off-guard, Hecate almost laughs aloud. She suddenly has a sense that what she’s feeling now is not a tiny fetus but a teenage girl, rolling her eyes at her mother’s ridiculousness. 

“You think I’m being silly,” she says. An answering throb.

Now her thoughts are moving forward swiftly, and a strong visual appears before her mind’s eye: a road diverging, two paths ahead of her, illuminated in steady color -- the left-hand path lit up pink, the right-hand one grey, both drifted about with mist. She closes her eyes and sees it as vividly as if it’s really there before her. She raises a hand before her, stretches it out to the left-hand path, and stirs the mist with her fingers. It shimmers, then parts before her, and the path clears. 

There’s a lot happening there, and all of it’s bound up with Pippa. Just at the tips of her fingers, she feels a swirling energy that’s much the same as what she’s been experiencing for the last half-hour: the anxiety, the self-doubt, the struggle to believe that she could ever be enough for Pippa. But then there’s a shift, and she reaches a little further, and the energy resolves into something new. A brief flash of herself and Pippa pressed together, kissing. A shiver runs over her, closing her eyes: it feels so entirely right. She opens her mind up again and sees more images of the two of them -- curled in bed, holding hands in what looks like a doctor’s office, walking in the woods, Pippa supporting Hecate on her arm -- and then images of the three of them. Pippa, Hecate, a small dark-haired child. The images are becoming less distinct, blurring and mixing together, but the feeling in them is consistent. Comfort. Peace. Contentment. And -- yes -- joy. Joy, for the first time in thirty years.

None of this has anything to do with a fairy tale. It’s about the two of them, Hecate and Pippa, and who they are together. Hecate thinks of Ada’s words: _It’s really rather straightforward_. She’s in love with Pippa, and Pippa with her -- she knows it now, standing with her hand outstretched into this possible future. They are in love. They have a child together. Whatever doubts she’s struggling with, whatever vulnerability she’ll have to own, whatever new ways of being she’ll have to learn -- how could she possibly _not_ choose this? 

She glances uneasily at the other path, the grey one, still shrouded in mist. She doesn’t want to leave this warm, pink place, but she really should know. She takes a step in that direction and holds her hand out, parting the fog.

She feels a sickening drop, as though there’s been an earthquake, and suddenly she’s completely immersed in a set of very familiar emotions. Loss, anguish, but most of all, fear. There’s so much fear, more than she’s ever experienced before. Fear of letting herself feel, fear of letting anyone see what she’s feeling, fear of making wrong decisions and paying for them forever, fear of aloneness... Pippa’s a presence here too, but her pink is dimmed and hemmed about by the grey, and her pain is almost palpable. Hecate and Pippa and the baby are all there, but shards of isolation separate them, all of them afraid to go too far, to show too much of what they feel, to acknowledge their own loneliness and yearning. Hecate is stunned by this, because the baby is part of it. There have been times when she’s able to recognize that all of her fear and angst are contaminating Pippa’s life as well, but the baby? Hecate tries to picture what the child will do if Hecate turns her back on Pippa. She thinks of the child drifting back and forth between them, always watching them warily, always trying to figure out what terms her mothers are on and how much she can say of one of them to the other. Both she and Pippa trying to pretend their feelings for one another don’t exist, and the child half-perceiving them, loving both of them and watching them try not to love each other. Second- and third-guessing every word she speaks of one of them to the other. Watching them be miserable, and absorbing that misery.

Hecate lets out an incoherent cry and flings a hand before her face, as though she can ward off that future. The image of the paths ahead dissolves and she’s in the middle of her room, breathing hard. The child’s energy still pulses within her, and she places her hands on her stomach and beams the message in as strongly as she can: _I won’t let that happen. You will never have to live like that. I will not let it be._

With feverish energy she strides to the cabinet where she keeps her personal potion stores, then to her cauldron. She brews a reversal for the silly anti-love potion she’d made and drinks it down quickly, barely feeling the emotions seething and jostling within her as the potion’s effects are set at naught; she’s such a mess of emotion now anyway. All she knows right now is that she needs to do this quickly, before her resolve can falter, and she needs to do it in her right mind. 

She flings an arm out and summons Pippa. The residual static of transference has barely subsided when Hecate seizes Pippa and pulls her into a kiss.

Pippa's deep into the kiss in an instant, and then there’s one brief second of confusion. "That potion—" she begins. "Reversed," Hecate cuts in, and before Hecate has closed the _d _sound Pippa's thrown herself into the kiss, her arms first tight around Hecate’s shoulders, then moving over her body, possessively, triumphantly. Hecate has never experienced anything remotely like this, but she feels no nerves, no confusion. It’s Pippa.__

____

____

After an aeon or so they part, just a bit. “I apologize,” Hecate says, without knowing she’s going to. “I know you’ve always hated that.”

Pippa lets out a peal of laughter, stunned and exultant, then closes the space between their lips again. She half-staggers across the room, dragging Hecate to the sofa, never breaking the kiss. They collapse on the cushions together, Pippa climbing into Hecate’s lap. They kiss until they’re breathless and disheveled, until Hecate’s face is smudged with pink lipstick and Pippa’s hair is down around her shoulders and her dress is hiked up halfway to her thighs. They kiss until every nerve ending in Hecate’s body is sparking and fizzing and her face is flushed, her hairline damp, one large tendril of hair escaped from her bun and her face surrounded with wispy flyaways that Pippa’s touch has set loose. They kiss until Hecate knows that if they kiss for one second more she is going to grab Pippa’s hand and thrust it between her legs, and it’s too early for that. She breaks the kiss then, gasping, and pulls Pippa’s head to her shoulder instead. Pippa collapses over her, and they lie there together, waiting for their breathing to slow, for their heart rates to settle. Hecate plants a kiss on Pippa’s temple, then another. She runs a hand through Pippa’s hair. Pippa lets out a small, satisfied noise.

After a time, Hecate cranes her neck a bit, meeting Pippa’s gaze. “I talked to Ada,” she says.

Pippa laughs out loud. “I gathered.”

“It seems I’m in love with you,” Hecate tells her.

Pippa’s eyes widen, and then her surprise dissolves into a smile. “It seems I’m in love with you too,” she says.

“So here we are,” Hecate says. She’s looking intently at Pippa, eyes roaming over her face, her neck, her hands, her body. Pippa. Here for her.

“Here we are,” Pippa agrees, and closes her eyes again, nuzzling further into Hecate’s neck.

In a moment one of Pippa’s eyes opens, warily. “I don’t have to worry that there's any chance that potion hasn't reversed properly, do I? ”

“No," Hecate says, a little drily, and Pippa sighs in relief. “This is me,” Hecate adds. A moment goes by, and then she tacks on a clause: “...and the baby.”

“Hmm?” Pippa says, opening an eye again.

“I thought I’d ask her what she thought,” Hecate says.

“And she told you?”

Hecate thinks of the two paths, of the pain and sorrow and fear in that grey lane. “In a manner of speaking.”

Pippa places a hand on Hecate’s stomach, sends a current of magic through it. “Thank you,” she says.

They both feel the pulse of the baby’s response. It’s a moment of joy, the three of them together.

Long minutes later Hecate opens her eyes again. “I do need to warn you,” she says, reluctantly. “I have no idea how to do this.”

Pippa smiles, eyes still closed. “You don’t need to plan it out, darling. We’ll take it as it comes.”

“I mean it,” Hecate tells her. “I’ve never... since we were teenagers, I mean, there’s never been anyone --”

Pippa pulls one of Hecate’s hands to her mouth, plants a kiss on her knuckles, then twines their fingers together. “We’ll have to learn together, then.”

“Pippa.” Hecate tilts Pippa’s chin up, making her look into her eyes. “This is important. This -- what’s happening -- it has never been... my way. I haven’t --”

“Hiccup, I know you.” Pippa stretches up to kiss Hecate’s cheek. “You don’t need to explain.”

“I have never been skilled at expressing my emotions --”

“Didn’t I just tell you that I know you?” 

“More than that. I’m afraid that I am not going to be able to... make things very easy for you.”

“I’m not looking for you to make things easy for me.” Pippa pulls Hecate into a long, deep kiss. Hecate closes her eyes, losing herself in the sensation, conscious thought abandoned.

“I’m with you now,” Pippa whispers at last, and plants a last tiny kiss on the corner of Hecate’s mouth. “That’s all I’ve wanted.”

Hecate lets out a long, shuddering breath and wraps her free arm around Pippa, pressing their bodies together all along their length. They fall asleep that way, Hecate and Pippa and the baby, enough in each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter completely kicked my ass, but here it is! Things should get less angsty and less cliffhangery from here on out, though I won't promise no more angst or no more cliffhangers...


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pippa's room isn't quite ready for her arrival. #OnlyOneBed #( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone, and sorry for the extremely long delay in posting this; it's been a rough couple of months. (If you are enjoying the story and would like to leave a comment, the encouragement would be really lovely right now...)
> 
> NOTE: This is happening in the timeline of S1 and therefore we are in the world where, when something breaks, it can be easily and routinely repaired by magic in a matter of seconds, as happens in Selection Day with Maud's glasses. We are not in the world of the finale, where Mildred invents a spell that will enable broken glasses to be fixed for the first time in magical history, apparently. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> TW for spiders.

The three witches stand at the threshold of the tower room, staring at the carnage before them. The little circular chamber -- recently hung with dainty pink apple-blossom paper as a welcoming gesture, but otherwise thankfully empty of possessions -- is drenched, water leaking all the way across the floor and out into the hallway. Both windows are smashed, wind and rain gusting through the few shards of glass left in the frames; the chimney is collapsed, the fireplace full of soot-stained rubble. Dozens upon dozens of bats hang upside down from the eaves. Strangest of all, one of the corners of the room has been taken over by a horde of spiders, hundreds of them, each one rather larger across than a penny and all busily engaged in constructing what appears to be a fairly advanced arachnid metropolis. The intricate network of webbing currently spans about six feet and has incorporated a good third of the double bed against the wall.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Ada says, sounding entirely contrite; Pippa cuts a quick glance across at her, but her face shows nothing but appropriate gravity. “I’m afraid your room has been the site of some... well...”

“Disaster, it seems,” Pippa finishes with a laugh. “I can see that.”

“Yes, well, we had it nicely prepared for your arrival, but somehow, earlier today, we seem to have been hit with a few calamities. I fear that it’s left your room somewhat unfit for human habitation.”

Now it’s Ada’s turn to take a quick, scrutinizing look at Pippa’s face, but just as she thinks she’s caught a glint of fun In Pippa’s eyes, Pippa turns away, taking a few steps toward the colony of spiders. “My loss is the spiders’ gain, I suppose,” she says lightly. “I’ve never seen spiders work quite so hard before.”

Ada shifts her weight subtly, giving Dimity, who’s seemed uncharacteristically lost for words, a rather meaning look. Finding her tongue, Dimity rushes in. “Yes, well, you see, they’ve run into a bit of magic. A spell for, uh... industry. To make them hard-working, you know.”

Pippa raises an eyebrow. “Was it important that they work hard? To the interests of the school, I mean?”

“What Dimity means to say,” Ada interjects, “is that one of the students tried to put a spell for industrious study onto  _ herself _ , but it went a bit wrong and... well, you see the result before you.”

“A student tried to put a spell on herself for hard work, missed, and hit some spiders?” Pippa asks. “In my room?”

“Well, you know, she thought it was empty. She was trying to get away from her... broom-mate, you see.”

“It was Mildred Hubble,” Dimity bursts in. “I’m sure HB -- erm, Hecate has told you about her.”

Pippa adds her voice to what had been a rather nervous round of laughter. “Indeed she has. I quite understand. And one disaster set off another, I suppose?”

“Yes! Yes, the spiders made the... windows crack, and then the chimney caved in. And the bats --”

“As so often happens,” Pippa agrees. She’s still avoiding Ada’s gaze. “Well, I’ll have to sleep somewhere. Suppose you show me where?”

This time the look that Ada and Dimity exchange is very obvious. “Well,” Ada says. “The trouble is we’re quite crowded in the castle at the moment. There aren’t really a lot of spare rooms available.”

“Many of the students are two to a room already,” Dimity adds. “And whenever we ask students living in singles to double up, there does tend to be some drama that results...”

“Perhaps I can bed down in one of the common rooms. Or a staff room,” Pippa suggests. Ada and Dimity exchange glances again.

“Oh, really, I can’t imagine you’d be comfortable in a common room! No, no, that would be entirely inappropriate,” Ada says.

“Where, then?”

There’s an awkward pause.

Pippa’s just opening her mouth to speak again when Dimity snaps her fingers in an unconvincing show of spontaneous inspiration. “You know,” she says. “It’s just occurred to me that a few of the staff members have a little extra space in our quarters. I don’t, unfortunately, and of course Gwen and Algie are -- well, we wouldn’t want to disturb them. And, Ada, your quarters aren’t quite suitable at the moment, due to the -- the --”

“Kittens,” Ada supplies quickly. “One of the familiars just had kittens on my sofa, and we wouldn’t want to disturb her nest.”

“Terribly inconvenient, especially so far outside of kitten season,” Pippa observes.

“Oh, terribly,” Ada agrees. “But, you know, I  _ do _ think that Hecate might just have the extra space to put you up for a bit, Pippa.”

“Yes, I think she could probably manage it. Just based on, you know, the space,” Dimity says. “Perhaps we could go and ask her --”

“Oh, there’s no need for all of us to go,” Pippa says brightly. “I’m sure I can find my way to her quarters. Why don’t I just go up and ask her, and perhaps you can see about my trunks getting up there instead?”

“Of course,” Ada says. “And once again, I’m so sorry about the state of your room --”

“Nothing to worry about,” Pippa tells her airily. “It could happen to anyone. Well, goodbye --” and she’s transferred away.

Ada looks over at Dimity. “Tell me you’re not responsible for the spiders.”

“Of course not,” Dimity says indignantly. “As if I’d stoop to that.”

Ada looks at her.

“All right, all right, I knocked out the windows. But it wasn’t something that -- I mean, if she’d  _ wanted  _ to sleep here, she could easily have repaired them --”

“Oh, yes, I quite agree,” Ada says, and a twinkle’s entered her eyes. “That was much my rationale for caving in the chimney.”

“The spiders must have been Gwen, then,” Dimity says. “Though really, she needn’t have gone to the trouble. I’d have thought retiring to open a teaching position for Pippa to fill would have been quite enough for her to do in the way of match-making.”

“She’s known Hecate since Hecate was a girl. I think she has more of an interest in Hecate’s happiness than people credit. But, honestly, magically amplifying the activity of a colony of  _ spiders _ ?”

“Not that it wasn’t effective,” Dimity says, glancing over at the corner of the room; the complex network of spider webs has become appreciably larger in the ten minutes they’ve been in the room. “We may have to do something to calm them down before they expand out into the hallway.”

“The bats may take care of that problem,” Ada says. “However they got here.”

“Algernon, do you think?” Dimity says.

Ada shrugs. “Or coincidence, perhaps. Maybe the stars aligned.”

(Three towers away, Mildred is guiltily stowing away the remains of the potion she’d attempted to use to put a welcoming spell on Miss Pentangle’s room -- a potion that’s clearly made the bats feel welcome, at any rate. Tabby is intently eyeing the few bats that followed her back to her room.)

“Do you think she sensed our, uh, subtle hand in this?” Dimity is asking Ada.

“I couldn’t quite get a look at her face,” Ada says. “I suppose it would have been less suspicious if there hadn’t been quite so many things happening at once. Next time, we might do better to confer on it.”

“I hope to heaven there isn’t a next time,” Dimity proclaims emphatically. “It’s ridiculous that there was a this time! If it had been left up to Pippa, I’m quite certain there wouldn’t have been. The idea of Hecate thinking they’d send an  _ inappropriate  _ message to the students. She’s pregnant with Pippa’s baby, for heaven’s sake!”

“To be fair, that did come about in rather unusual circumstances.”

“Still. The students know they’re a couple.” Dimity pauses. “I suppose that is, in fact, her thinking? If she’s truly not ready, it’s a bit hard on her for us to have made Pippa’s room completely unlivable. I really only wanted to give them an excuse.”

“As did I. As did we all, apparently.” Ada laughs. “As for Hecate, I’m sure she is concerned with appearances. But I’d also guess that she’s second-guessing herself --”

“Or third-guessing. Or twelfth-guessing --”

“Well, exactly. Knowing her, I thought it likely she could use a bit of a nudge.” Ada glances at her watch. “I suppose I’d better see about Pippa’s trunks getting to the right room.”

“Just a thought --”

“Let me rephrase. I’d better see about Pippa’s trunks getting to the right corridor. I think we can trust --” Ada’s eyes are sparkling with subdued mirth -- “that they’ll retrieve them on their own time.”

“Tomorrow morning, perhaps.”

“One can hope.” 

Upstairs, Pippa has just materialized outside Hecate’s door. “Hecate?” she calls, rapping quickly on the wood. “Will you let me in? It seems my room isn’t quite ready for me,” she adds, as footsteps approach the door. “Really, your friends need to work on their subtlety --"

The door opens, and Pippa falls silent as she takes in the woman standing before her.

Hecate’s taken her hair down out of its usual bun; instead, a simple, single braid trails down over one shoulder, several inches curling loose at the bottom. Her makeup is applied with careful precision, but the lipstick is pink, a shade or two brighter than Pippa is used to seeing on her -- an inviting look, especially combined with the delicate rose-flush of her cheeks. She’s wearing her usual thick black dressing gown, with its strange leathery-looking texture, but although she’s tied it tightly at the waist the neckline gapes open the tiniest bit, just enough for Pippa to catch a quick glimpse of what looks like black lace underneath it. She’s wearing a pair of flat black slippers, and without the inches that her high heels add she looks small and slightly vulnerable. Her fingers are playing nervously with the tie on her robe, and she’s not quite meeting Pippa’s gaze. Pippa’s reduced to staring, wordless.

Though Hecate and Pippa have been building their relationship for the past few weeks, they have not -- as Ada and Dimity have clearly inferred -- yet slept together. Pippa’s been taking Hecate’s lead there, aware that it’s a difficult thing for her. Now, looking at Hecate as she stands in the doorway -- her shy posture, the carefully calculated outfit and hair and makeup -- Pippa’s certain that Hecate, too, had hoped that things would change for them when Pippa moved into the castle. Pippa knows Hecate well enough to know at a glance that she took hours getting ready.  She can see Hecate letting her hair loose, then scolding herself and pulling it back as severely as ever, then trying it down again, and finally settling on the compromise of the single braid. She can see her fiddling with her lipstick, using her magic to brighten and darken it, trying for a shade of pink that Pippa will find appealing without going too far. And she can see her trying on various types of clothing, pulling that dressing gown like armor securely around a black-lace negligee, something she’s bought or made or conjured specifically for Pippa to see --

All of a sudden Pippa can’t stand waiting on this doorstep any longer. “Hecate,” she says, and leans in to kiss Hecate’s cheek. Hecate tilts her head slightly and Pippa’s kiss catches her just at the corner of her mouth. Pippa shuts her eyes for a split second, telling herself she will  _ not _ thrust her hands into Hecate’s hair and her tongue into Hecate’s mouth, that she  _ will _ allow Hecate to move at her own pace, but there’s a bare trace of violet-scented perfume in the air and she knows Hecate’s wearing it for her, that Hecate knows what that scent does to her and is  _ deliberately _ making her feel that way, and she manages not to fling herself at Hecate headlong but can’t resist letting her lips graze their way from Hecate’s mouth toward the line of her jaw, stopping a tenth of an inch from her neck. Hecate puffs out a quick breath and shifts to let Pippa into the room. “Well met, sister,” she says with ludicrous formality, and Pippa laughs out loud.

“Well met,” she returns, a bit of good-natured banter edging the words. She steps into the room and lets the door fall shut, turning to face Hecate squarely. “You look beautiful, Hiccup,” she adds softly.

Hecate shrugs a bit uncomfortably, but her smile is true. “As do you,” she says.

Pippa knows she’s windswept and disheveled from the long broomstick ride here, but she can tell from Hecate’s look that she doesn’t mind. “I’m a mess, but thank you,” she says. “Ada or someone will likely bring my things up soon enough and I can freshen up a bit...”

Hecate goes still. “Bring your things up? Meaning... up here?”

“Yes, well, it seems there’s been rather a series of disasters in my room tonight,” Pippa says. She considers pretending innocence as to how the room got that way -- Hecate can be strangely naïve about such things, and there’s a mischievous bit of her that wants to see how long she could keep the game up -- but then she relents; Hecate doesn’t like being made fun of, and Pippa has known since they began that it is essential that she show Hecate in every way she can that she can trust Pippa. “I know you told the staff we’d be staying in separate quarters, but they seem to have had other ideas.”

“Other ideas? What do you mean?”

Pippa laughs and slides a hand into Hecate’s. “My room has been invaded by bats. And spiders. And the chimney’s collapsed. And the windows are broken. And it’s flooded.”

Hecate’s eyes have widened fractionally. “Are you telling me someone has dared --”

“Oh, go easy on them, Hiccup,” Pippa tells her, fondly. “No doubt things got a bit out of hand, but I think they meant well.”

“Meant well! In destroying your room?” 

Pippa moves in close to Hecate; in her heels, with Hecate wearing flats, she feels like she’s towering uncomfortably over the other woman, though she’s really only an inch or two taller. “Well. I do have a backup in mind,” she murmurs, and plants a soft kiss just between Hecate’s cheekbone and her ear. “If you don’t mind.”

Hecate looks up at her and there’s so much in her eyes, her gaze swimming with desire and fear and confusion and yearning. Pippa holds her gaze, trying to keep her own look as simple as possible. “I love you, Hiccup,” she says, with straightforward warmth. She tells Hecate this more frequently than she might tell someone else; she wants her to get used to the idea, to begin to take it for granted. She knows Hecate can’t yet bring herself to believe she deserves Pippa’s love. That will be a long-term project. In the meantime, Pippa doesn’t intend to let her forget that she has it.

Hecate nods a bit -- it’s not an easy phrase for her to return -- but the soft, sweet smile that touches her lips is one that Pippa lives for, giving her the feeling of a sunrise in her chest. “Pipsqueak,” she says, in lieu of the words she can’t quite say, and pulls Pippa into a kiss. Pippa leans into it, backing Hecate up across the room until the backs of her knees hit the love seat and she falls backward, Pippa on top of her. The kiss is long and thorough and, increasingly, too slow for Pippa’s taste. She’s trying to hold herself back, trying to let Hecate take the lead, but desire is flooding her to her pores now and it’s so hard to stop herself moving too quickly. She lets her lips trail from Hecate’s mouth to her neck, feeling Hecate shiver, hearing her gasp, and she’s fingering the tie on Hecate’s robe with one hand, not knowing whether she can pull it or not, not knowing if that would be too much --

Somehow the tie is undone and Hecate’s robe parts. Beneath is a simple black slip, satin edged with a demure bit of lace. “Oh,  _ Hecate,” _ Pippa murmurs, and she kisses her way down Hecate’s neck until she reaches her collarbone. She runs her tongue along it, then pauses, listening to Hecate’s uneven breath, gauging her next move. She herself is still in her ordinary travel dress, but one of Hecate’s hands has strayed to her bum and the other is creeping up her leg, pulling the dress up higher as she goes. Pippa takes her cue from that and lets her mouth move down a few more inches, until her lips are directly over Hecate’s heart. Her heartbeat is frantic, pulsing hectically against Pippa’s mouth. Pippa thinks that maybe, just maybe, this is it.

She turns her head for just a moment and looks up at Hecate’s face. Her eyes are closed, her cheeks flushed red, little wisps of hair curling out around her hairline and damp with sweat. As Pippa takes her in, her eyes open and focus in on Pippa’s. The naked want in them could not be clearer.

Pippa swallows. “We could take this to the bed,” she says.

Hecate’s eyes widen, but her nod is definite.

They stumble the few steps across the room to the bed, Hecate shrugging off her dressing gown as she goes. Pippa kicks off her stupid heels and glances down at her stupid dress, but --

Hecate’s hands find the hem of the dress and she meets Pippa’s gaze again, the question in her eyes. Pippa nods encouragingly and Hecate tries to pull the dress over her head, but it gets rucked up rather uselessly around Pippa’s waist and she can’t get it to rise higher. Pippa laughs and vanishes it with a gesture, and then they’re in the bed, skin against skin, Hecate flat on her back, Pippa over her. Pippa kisses her way to Hecate’s ear, one hand sliding under Hecate’s slip. Hecate shudders.

“I thought you should know,” Hecate whispers, “that if my colleagues hadn’t wrecked your room it would have been hit with a rather unseasonable indoor blizzard right about now.”

“I think  _ you _ should know,” Pippa replies, a laugh bubbling up in her chest, “that if it hadn’t, I’d have stashed my suitcases under the bed and transferred right up here.” She meets Hecate’s eyes, and the laugh escapes. “Oh, my darling,” she murmurs, pulling up the slip. “My beautiful useless darling. There’s no need for pretense. I’m here.”

“Pipsqueak,” Hecate murmurs once more, and she closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the pillow. “Mine.”

“Yours,” Pippa confirms, and bends her head over Hecate again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BRIEF NOTE on Pippa's use of the term "useless" to refer to Hecate: I have a backstory in my head that didn't fit in the fic in which Pippa learns the term "useless lesbian" from some of the students at Pentangle's. She overheard one of them calling her that, thought they were being homophobic, and called them into her office for a serious discussion, but when they shamefacedly explained what it actually meant she realized they were not wrong and had a hard time not laughing. She's since incorporated it into her vocabulary and has explained it to Hecate, who does not find it as funny as Pippa does, but Pippa still uses it occasionally anyway.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picking up where we left off, here's some porn with feelings. (Warning, though: chapter subhead should probably be "Hecate Hardbroom Has Hangups".)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! Have some smut. #FirstTime

It’s not the first time they’ve gotten this far; Hecate’s sofa has been witness to more and more physical intimacy in the last month or two. It is the first time, however, that they’ve chosen to move to the bed, and they’re both clear on what that means. And they’re both clear on the fact that this is, in fact, new territory for one of them -- have been clear on that since the time a few weeks back when things had gotten a bit more heated on that sofa than they had before, and Pippa had propped herself up over Hecate and asked the question straight out. “Hiccup, darling, have you ever -- I mean, are you a virgin?”

Hecate had blushed horribly, and the moment between them had crumpled. “I -- it hasn’t been -- that is to say, there have been... complicated reasons --”

Pippa stroked a stray tendril of hair off Hecate’s face, giving her a long moment, but Hecate seemed to have stalled out. After another thirty seconds or so, all she'd managed was “It’s difficult to explain.”

Pippa shifted her weight to lie alongside Hecate, pulling her head to rest under Pippa’s chin. “You don't need to explain anything you don’t want to,” she said.

And if her heart sank when Hecate, after another long pause, replied with “Perhaps that would be best,” Hecate didn’t have to know about it. Someday Hecate will be comfortable, Pippa tells herself. They’ll grow into this relationship, grow into each other, and eventually, Hecate will be ready to talk. She’d told Pippa at the outset that she wouldn’t be able to make things easy on Pippa, but Pippa’s known all along that the real issue is Hecate’s inability to make things easy on herself. But she’ll learn -- the thought is fierce in Pippa’s mind. In time, Hecate will learn to trust, as long as Pippa shows herself to be worthy of that trust. As long as they take it slowly. As long as Pippa gives her plenty of space, and time, and love, and gentleness. She’ll get there. They’ll get there.

It’s not so easy, though, in this particular moment, when Pippa doesn’t want to leave a millimeter of space between their bodies, when the throbbing between her legs is setting its own pace and making _gentle_ a bit of a challenge. She’s pulled the hair band from the end of Hecate’s braid and the cascade of her hair is everywhere, falling over her shoulders and chest, getting in Pippa’s hands and mouth. She sputters a bit, pulling black strands out of her mouth, and Hecate laughs, and things get a little easier for a moment. Then Pippa’s pushed a sheaf of black curls back over Hecate’s shoulder, and her lips meet the black silk over Hecate’s breast. She mouths at the fabric for a moment, feeling it dampen and then mold around Hecate’s nipple, and the shock of it darts straight to her cunt. She raises her head, meets Hecate’s eyes. “May I --?” she says, pulling lightly at the material with her fingertips, and she can see the trepidation in Hecate’s eyes. She holds her gaze, and after a long moment, Hecate nods slowly. Pippa lets a sunburst of a smile light up her face, then raises her fingers and snaps once. The slip melts away to nothingness, and Hecate’s left nude but for a pair of underwear. Pippa’s eyes widen as she takes in that underwear -- heaven knows she’s imagined Hecate like this often enough, but in her imagination the underwear has always been black. These underwear are a bright, shocking pink.

She raises her eyes to meet Hecate’s, and Hecate clears her throat. She says, voice low, “They make me feel closer to you.”

“Hiccup, I’m right...” Then Pippa takes in what Hecate’s really saying. “Are you saying you’ve been wearing these...”

A small smile touches Hecate’s lips. “Sometimes.”

Pippa’s struggling to process this. How many times has she been speaking with Hecate, by mirror or in person, not knowing that nestled between Hecate’s legs was this reminder of her? How many times has she _not_ been speaking with Hecate and Hecate’s been wearing these, thinking of Pippa, feeling the fabric caressing -- Maybe she’s worn them while teaching class. In boring staff meetings. Maybe she’s worn them at night, alone in this bed. Maybe, wearing them, she’s let her own hand drift between her legs, underneath that scrap of pink silk --

“Are you all right?” Hecate asks, with a touch of concern, and Pippa realizes that she’s motionless, frozen. She looks into Hecate’s eyes and sees that Hecate has taken this the wrong way. “I didn’t mean to be... inappropriate," she says, and Pippa wants to laugh and cry simultaneously. “Hiccup. Darling,” she replies, and slides up so their bodies are pressed together all along their length. “I’m not judging. I’m very, very, very turned on.”

The disbelief mixed with the wonder on Hecate’s face makes Pippa want to curse everyone who’s ever made Hecate feel gawky or ugly or less-than. Unfortunately, she knows Hecate has done a lot of that work on her own. “We’ll have to teach you to tell the difference,” she says, and pushes herself up so she’s over Hecate. “But in the meantime, please. Keep being inappropriate.”

Now there’s a touch of mischief in Hecate’s eyes; Pippa revels in it. When Hecate speaks, her voice is almost a whisper, but it’s perfectly clear. “They’re very wet right now.”

The rush between Pippa’s own legs is instantaneous. Hearing words like those on Hecate Hardbroom’s lips -- “Funny. So are mine.”

“Makes them rather useless,” Hecate observes.

Pippa laughs aloud and snaps her fingers again, and they’re both completely nude, their underwear sailing across the room to land together on the sofa. Pippa is not about to vanish those pink underwear. They’re keeping those.

“Hecate,” she murmurs, and begins kissing down from Hecate’s ear to her neck, her collarbone, her chest. She lets her fingers caress Hecate’s stomach -- tracing the tiny new rise there, feeling it dip as Hecate lets out a quick gasp -- then trails them down to Hecate’s thighs. Her lips are poised over Hecate’s right nipple, and her fingers are brushing past tangled damp curls, ready to find out just how wet Hecate is --

“No.” Pippa feels a swift, agonizing bolt of disappointment -- Hecate wants to stop? _Now?_ \-- but when she looks back up at Hecate’s face she sees something else is going on. “You first,” Hecate whispers, and shifts sideways, pushing Pippa into the mattress. “Please. I want to...”

What Pippa wants most right now is to see what Hecate’s face looks like when she comes, but she’s not about to argue. “Anything you want,” she says, sliding her body under Hecate’s, and now the mischief is back in Hecate’s eyes, along with a touch of wickedness.

“ _Anything_ I want?” Hecate says, and pulls Pippa into a deep kiss. Pippa lets out a small moan and tilts her head back. Her knees fall open, and she feels Hecate’s smile against her lips. Then Hecate’s kissing down her body, following the path Pippa herself took a moment ago, ear to neck to chest --

Pippa moans again at the sensation of Hecate’s mouth closing over her nipple. She’s gasping now, legs spread wide, hoping Hecate’s hand will move between them, needing Hecate inside her. But Hecate’s questing mouth is uncertain, her tongue sliding over Pippa’s nipple in a way that’s maddening but so light and tentative. Pippa groans, needing more. After a few moments she gasps out “You can go harder, Hiccup.”

Hecate freezes for a moment, then begins sucking a bit harder. It’s still not enough.

“ _Oh --_ more. Please.”

Again there’s a second’s pause, and then Hecate pulls Pippa’s nipple deeper into her mouth. Her teeth scrape along the edge of Pippa’s areola.

“Ouch.”

All of a sudden, Hecate’s mouth has moved away altogether. “I’m sorry. I don’t --”

Pippa sees with horror that Hecate’s on the brink of tears. “Hecate, what --?”

“I hurt you. I --”

“Barely,” Pippa says, but Hecate’s talking over her.

“I’m so sorry. I just don’t -- I’ve never --”

“Hiccup. Darling. It’s all right. Please --”

“I want to please you --”

“I’ve never been so _pleased_ in my life. You have no idea --”

“I have no idea what I am doing! And clearly, whatever I am doing is wrong.”

“Hecate, my love. You’re doing absolutely everything right. We’re just learning each other’s bodies, that’s all.”

“But if I had experience --”

“If you had experience you’d be somebody else. I want you.”

“I just -- I wish I... knew what I was doing. How you’re feeling. I don’t know what to...”

An idea occurs to Pippa, something that might ease this situation. “I may have a fix for that,” she says.

“What --?”

Pippa raises a hand, sweeps it briefly over their bodies. “With my hand, I cast this spell -- all that I feel, you’ll feel as well.”

Hecate starts as she feels Pippa’s magic brushing over her naked skin. “Now. Touch me,” Pippa says.

“Touch you --”

“Anywhere.”

After a second’s hesitation, Hecate raises her hand to touch Pippa’s shoulder. She gasps as she feels the sensation of a hand sliding over her own shoulder.

“There. Now you know exactly how you’re making me feel.”

“I...” Hecate runs her hand from Pippa’s shoulder to the center of her chest, then down to rest over Pippa’s heart. She looks down in disbelief at her own bare chest, at Pippa’s empty hands.

Pippa reaches up to cradle Hecate’s face, love shining from her eyes, and then very gently guides Hecate down to her breast. “Let’s try picking up where we left off,” she says.

Very slowly, Hecate opens her lips, then closes her mouth over Pippa’s nipple. The small, breathy moans they let out as they each feel the warmth of Hecate’s mouth enclosing the nipple are all but identical.

More tentative than ever, Hecate runs her tongue over Pippa’s nipple, registering that it’s not nearly enough. Experimentally, she sucks harder, flicking the tip a bit with her tongue, and Pippa gasps and squirms, but Hecate has a thoughtful face on. “Are you sure this spell works properly?” she asks, pulling an inch or two away for a moment. “I’m hardly feeling this.”

Pippa wriggles under her, her legs still wide open, still hoping Hecate will take the hint. “My nipples have never been very sensitive,” she says. “It takes more than that.” She smiles up at Hecate. “I take it yours are more so.”

“I don’t really --”

Swiftly, Pippa licks her thumb and the tip of her index finger, then reaches out and runs them over Hecate’s right nipple. Hecate lets out a cry immediately, her whole body jerking. Pippa’s eyes widen, and she shifts position until Hecate’s breast is poised over her mouth and then runs her tongue over the nipple. Hecate thrashes again, crying out helplessly. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Pippa murmurs. She looks up at Hecate, eyes closed tightly, breast heaving, loose strands of hair clinging to her temples, and wonders if Hecate could come from nipple stimulation alone. But just as she’s thinking there’s no time like the present to find out, Hecate has flipped their positions, pushing Pippa into the mattress again. “I told you. You first,” she says, and takes Pippa’s nipple in her mouth again. She sucks hard this time, feeling Pippa’s reactions in her own body, calibrating her responses in return. She lets her teeth graze over the tip of the nipple, pauses, and then does it again, harder. Finally she takes it between her teeth and bites down, first softly, then a little harder, until Pippa’s wondering if _she_ can come from nipple stimulation alone. Her legs are still wide open and it’s all she can do to keep from grabbing Hecate’s hand and pushing it to where she needs it to be; she’s desperate now, barely in control, more turned on than she’s ever been in her life, and Hecate is still preoccupied with her nipples. “ _Please,_ Hecate,” she blurts out. “ _Please_ \-- I need you -- I need you --”

Hecate’s lips quirk up in a small smile, with just a note of enchanting self-satisfaction. “You have me.”

“I mean I need -- your hand --”

Hecate holds up a hand, expression questioning. Pippa seizes it and guides it down over her stomach, down to her mons, before hesitating, not wanting to push too far if Hecate’s not ready. Hecate closes her eyes briefly, taking a deep breath, then opens her eyes again and meets Pippa’s gaze straight on. Slowly, so slowly, she moves her hand between Pippa’s legs.

Pippa thrashes, head tossing back and forth against the pillow, as Hecate’s fingers just graze past her clit. She has no idea how much noise she’s making until Hecate raises her other hand and, with a few murmured words and quick gestures, casts a soundproofing spell, thank the bats. Hecate brushes over Pippa’s clit again and Pippa lets out a noise that’s just shy of a scream, then pushes herself up on her elbows for a half-second, her eyes seeking out Hecate’s. “Please -- inside --” she manages.

Hecate’s eyes are as wide as saucers, and she shifts position, the thumb of one hand still resting over Pippa’s clit, the other hand moving to Pippa’s entrance. A strange expression flits across her face, and then, with a few more murmured words, she literally shrugs off the spell Pippa had put on her, the spell that means that she feels what Pippa feels. 

“Why --?”

“I just -- the first time I feel this, I want it to be real. And... I want it to be you.”

Pippa nods in understanding, and then that hint of mischief appears in Hecate’s eyes again, along with the barest trace of growing confidence. “Besides. Watching you -- listening to you -- that’s enough.” 

Then, slowly, so slowly, she pushes a finger inside Pippa.

It’s one fingertip and Pippa nearly comes around it then and there. She needs more, so much more, and she has just enough sense left to gasp out, “Your nails --”

“Oh.” Hecate’s brow furrows as she looks down at her hand. An expression of concentration crosses her face, and in a moment her nails have shortened and blunted themselves.

“Now -- please -- more --”

Hecate slides that one finger in deeper, till it’s entirely buried in Pippa’s warmth. Her thumb slides over Pippa’s clit in a circular pattern, once. Pippa’s hips are thrusting up now, desperate for more. “More fingers?” she gasps.

Hecate nods, withdrawing her finger, then slowly, precisely, slipping two inside. Pippa can feel her running her fingertips over Pippa’s inner walls, gauging the space, learning. Pippa’s hips are bucking wildly, trying to push Hecate’s fingers inside her as deep as they’ll go. Hecate’s thumb has begun circling Pippa’s clit harder, with more confidence, and Pippa is crying out in earnest, and then Hecate pushes in a third finger and twists her hand a little and Pippa comes, her whole body seizing around Hecate’s hand, flailing out of control. Hecate’s eyes are huge as she watches Pippa come apart, feeling Pippa’s cunt contract around her fingers again and again.

Pippa comes back to herself in degrees, lying boneless against the mattress -- she’s spent, unable to do anything but listen to the crashing of blood in her ears slowly subsiding, her heart rate winding down again. Eventually she opens her eyes and meets Hecate’s gaze. The look in her eyes is complicated -- there’s wonder there, and some satisfaction, but more uncertainty. She glances down at her own hand, still buried inside Pippa. “Should I…”

“Come up here,” Pippa says, finding her voice a little bit hoarse.

Slowly, Hecate pulls her fingers out, then looks at them as if she’s not sure what to do with them, covered in come. Pippa smiles and gestures to conjure up a washcloth, more as a joke than anything else, then laughs out loud as she finds that she’s too drained to manage it. _Looks like you fucked the magic right out of me,_ she almost says, and then thinks better of it; she’s not sure how Hecate would respond to that particular word right now, let alone the insinuation that she might have disrupted Pippa’s magic.

On cue, Hecate says “I’m sorry -- did I…?”

“Oh, Hiccup.” Pippa grabs a loose corner of the sheet and pushes it toward Hecate, shaking her head. “The idea of you apologizing right now…”

Hecate dries her hand, still looking prim, then slides up the bed to lie alongside Pippa. Pippa pulls Hecate’s head down on her shoulder. “Will you be all right?” Hecate asks, seriously. “Your magic --”

“I’m so much more than all right. And my magic will be fine. I’m just a bit depleted at the moment.”

Hecate looks just a bit smug now. Pippa laughs again in sheer delight. 

“Give me just a minute,” she murmurs, “one minute to recover, and then I’m going to make you come so hard --”

But the expression on Hecate’s face has dimmed again, turned troubled. Pippa’s brow furrows, and she reaches up to put an arm around Hecate, pulling her closer. “What is it?” she says. 

“It is only that… I’m not sure…” She pauses, and then says simply, “Do we have to?”

Pippa’s blood runs cold at the phrase, dispelling the haze she’s been floating in. She pushes herself up on the pillow, tipping Hecate’s chin up so she’s facing her. “Hecate! Do you really think I’d make you do anything you didn’t want to do?”

After a second Hecate shakes her head.

“I didn’t mean -- I just thought…” _I thought you’d want to_ is the first phrase that occurs to her, but she knows Hecate will hear it as expectant, probably judgmental. “We don’t _have to_ do anything.” she says. Her stomach drops as she runs through the events of the night in this new light. “I never, ever want you to do anything that you don’t want to do. If you felt -- pressured into anything we did --”

“No! No,” Hecate cries. “That isn’t -- I enjoyed everything we did tonight. Very much.” A shadow of a smile. “I can’t tell you how much.” 

_Then why…_ But Pippa is finding it extremely difficult to find words Hecate can’t take the wrong way. Finally she just says, “I don’t ever want to do anything you don’t want.”

Hecate looks down. “It’s not that I don’t want it,” she says, very softly. 

“Then -- anything you’re not comfortable with.”

The expression of gratitude on Hecate’s face tears at Pippa's heart.

“Can I --?” Hecate asks, and inclines her head toward Pippa’s shoulder again. 

Wordlessly Pippa pulls her in tight, as close as she can get, till she’s half-draped over Pippa’s body. “I love you, Hiccup. I love you so much,” she whispers. 

“I… love you too. Pipsqueak.”

Pippa pulls the blanket over them, tries to pull the words over herself the same way. She drifts off, holding their warmth close, resolving to put her worries off. She’ll get there. They’ll get there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why everything I write turns to angst but I feel the need to apologize. *blushing emoji*


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex stuff, part 2. Or: how many hangups does Hecate Hardbroom have if Hecate Hardbroom's hangups are halved?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> E-rated chapter. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's been commenting on this fic. You make me happy. 😊

Things go on that way for a full week.

Pippa had suspected even before they began together that Hecate was not at all a prude, just inexperienced and unsure of herself. She knew Hecate’s repression and awkwardness formed an inadequate shield for the passionate, wildly intense woman underneath; she knew that Hecate cannot be stopped once she’s committed to figuring something out, that she’s an incredibly quick study. She’d fantasized about what Hecate would be like in bed, how all those traits might come together. But she still hadn’t been prepared for what that first week as lovers would look like.

Hecate makes use of the spell that lets her feel everything Pippa feels to learn every inch of Pippa’s body, studying it with a single-mindedness that suggests there will be a test on the material, and then she sets about proving that she can be the best lover Pippa’s ever had. Pippa stumbles through her classes in a daze during that first week, her mind never far from Hecate and what they will be doing when at last the evening comes and they can lock Hecate’s door and set a soundproofing spell. Every night Hecate grows a little more confident, a little more determined to surpass what she’s done before, and every night Pippa is reduced to begging as Hecate makes her come a little harder and wait a little longer for it. Often Hecate wears the look of a scientist as she tests Pippa’s reactions to a touch in a certain spot, a particular precise twist of a finger or flick of her tongue. Pippa comes and comes and comes again; Hecate can’t get enough of her moans, gasps, cries, of her begging for release, of how her climax shakes her and half the time leaves her all but greyed out, able to do nothing but let it tear through her and then try to remember how to breathe again afterwards. Pippa has never been so consumed by sex with anyone as she is with Hecate that week.

But Hecate will not allow Pippa to make her come.

At first Pippa thought that they’d get there quickly, that as their intimacy grew Hecate would surely give in to her own desires and let Pippa make love to her. Because Pippa has little doubt that Hecate does, in fact, desire that. It’s in her face when Pippa touches her, in her harsh, stuttering breathing, in wide dark eyes with dilated pupils and in her sopping wet pink underwear. Her helpless cries when Pippa plays with her nipples, kisses behind her earlobe, licks and sucks down to her bellybutton. Pippa keeps thinking that surely this time Hecate will let go of whatever it is that’s holding her back, that she’ll shut down whatever corner of her mind is keeping her from giving herself over completely and just _let Pippa make her come for Goddess’ sake_.

But every time, as she begins to draw near her climax, she pulls away, flips them so she’s on top, pins Pippa’s hands to the mattress, and redirects all her attention to making Pippa come. And Pippa comes, writhing and crying out, again and again. And as they’re falling asleep, she tells herself tomorrow will be different.

She’s tried to talk to Hecate about it, and Hecate shuts her down. This is complicated by the fact that it’s still difficult to find words that it’s impossible for Hecate to take the wrong way. _Don’t you want to come?_ still sounds expectant and possibly judgmental. _Don’t you want me?_ is a thousand times worse. _What am I doing wrong?_ \-- the unaskable questions pile up, getting more and more awful. _Why won’t you let me make you come? Why won’t you let me in? Why don’t you want me to be with you that way? What am I doing wrong?_

After a week it all comes to a head.

It’s late afternoon, and Pippa has a meeting with Ada to review the chanting curriculum through the mid-term examinations. It is not a particularly interesting meeting and Pippa’s mind, as usual, is on Hecate, on Hecate in bed, Hecate’s mouth on her, Hecate’s hand inside her --

“Pippa?” she hears, and with a start she looks up at Ada, who’s tapping the curriculum Pippa drafted with a pencil. It’s about the third time she’s tuned out and had to be recalled to the present moment. Ada, of course, looks understanding.

“You seem a bit distracted,” Ada says. Pippa flushes; Ada’s eyes are a little too knowing.

“I apologize,” she says. “I just...” She trails off, not sure what she’s just.

“We can pick this up another day, if you’d like,” Ada suggests.

“Oh, no. Don’t be silly. We need to get this sorted.” It’s true; they’ve already rescheduled this meeting twice. Pippa manufactures a shiver, deciding she needs just a moment away. “If I could just go get a jumper --” And a glass of cold water. Several glasses of cold water. Or a cold shower spell. Something.

“Of course. Just come back when you’re ready.”

Dredging up a rote smile, Pippa flicks her fingers up and transfers to Hecate’s room. Her jumper should be strewn over the sofa, where it was abandoned the previous night.

Even before she’s finished materializing, Pippa can hear that something’s going on. Those noises -- Pippa recognizes them, of course, she’s hearing them every night -- a gasp, a high-pitched squeak, a long, shuddering groan. For a tenth of a second, before Pippa’s head has a chance to catch up, her heart drops into her stomach, thinking she’s about to burst in on Hecate with someone else. Someone that, unlike Pippa, she’s allowing to really touch her, to push her to the edge, over the edge. What --?

Then Pippa’s fully in the room and the scene comes clear to her eyes. There’s Hecate, alone on the bed, blankets and sheets tossed aside. Her hand is between her legs, working furiously. To judge from the sound of things, she’s nearing her climax.

Pippa stares for one second, and then Hecate’s eyes fly open and she takes in Pippa standing there. She gives a very different sort of cry and clutches after the bedsheets, pulling them over her head. She lies there like that for a moment, sheets draped over her head, breathing heavily. Pippa’s frozen, wondering what on earth she should do with this particular moment.

Finally she takes a few steps towards the bed, sits down tentatively at its foot. “Hecate?” she says.

Hecate’s voice is muffled but clearly understandable. “Please go away.”

“But why?”

“This is humiliating!” The words come out in a strangled cry.

“Why is it humiliating?” Pippa says, trying to keep her tone neutral, common-sensical.

Hecate doesn’t reply.

Gingerly, Pippa reaches out and touches Hecate’s sheet-covered foot. “Will you please come out of there?” she asks. “You don’t need to hide.”

Slowly, Hecate pulls the sheet down just enough to reveal her eyes. Pippa can’t stand the look in them, shame and fear and hesitation. How did Hecate ever get the idea that she needed to feel that way around Pippa in a moment like this?

“Hecate,” she says, gently. “What’s going on?”

In Hecate’s gaze she reads the answer -- _Are you kidding?_

“I don’t mean that. I mean -- why...” Time to search for perfectly calibrated words now, words that are clear enough and tactful enough and kind enough to set Hecate at her ease, keep her from feeling judged, remind her that she can trust Pippa with anything.

Instead Pippa finds herself blurting out, “Hecate, if you wanted to get off, why on _earth_ didn’t you call me?”

Hecate nearly pulls the sheets over her head again -- Pippa can see it in her face. She shakes her head silently.

Pippa takes a long, deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand....” She thinks that she could come up with all the right things to say if she just had a moment to process, maybe to jot her thoughts down, edit them, come up with a few drafts and narrow down just exactly what it will help Hecate to hear. But she doesn’t have that time, and so she just says, “Hecate, why won’t you let me touch you?”

“I have let you touch me,” Hecate says, her voice stiff.

“You know what I mean.”

Silence.

“It’s not that... it’s...” Deep breath. “I meant it when I said that I never want to do anything you don’t want. But I haven’t been sure what...” _I haven’t been sure why you won’t let me make you come and then I come up here and find you masturbating, making yourself come without me, and I don’t understand why you don’t want me._ Thankfully, Pippa still has the sense not to say any of that.

Unfortunately, what she does say is “I just want to be enough for you,” and she very nearly bursts into tears.

Hecate’s eyes grow huge. “Pipsqueak,” she breathes, and, pulling the sheet up over her chest, sits up and takes Pippa’s hand. “Oh, Pipsqueak. It’s not that. Shh.” She pulls Pippa into an embrace. Pippa is still fighting back tears.

“I’m sorry -- I know...” _I know this is hard for you. I know it’s complicated. I know it’s not about me. I know you need space to talk to me about it, that these things take time, that we’ll get there._ All important things to tell Hecate, but she’s still afraid she’s going to cry if she tries to say anything more, so she just leans into Hecate’s embrace.

Since they began their relationship Pippa’s been the one trying to care for Hecate all the time, spending so much time and energy on trying to convince Hecate to trust her, trying to make her feel loved and comfortable and safe. She hasn’t been spending very much time letting herself have her own feelings about the things that have been difficult or confusing. She’s decided that her role in this relationship is to help Hecate to a place where she can be happy, where her fears will be left behind her. 

Now, for just a minute, she slumps into Hecate’s arms and allows herself to accept her own feelings. Her worries that she’s not enough. That Hecate is not learning to trust her, but is merely learning how to keep parts of herself locked away permanently. That they won’t, in fact, get there. That she’s doing it all wrong.

Finally she says, “If we could just talk about it?”

There’s a long pause. Pippa can hear Hecate’s silent struggle in it, can hear her trying to put words to something she would clearly rather leave unsaid. Pippa supposes there might be something she herself could say to make it easier, but, suddenly exhausted, she just lets the silence ride, letting Hecate find the words on her own time.

Finally, Hecate says, “I am afraid it is... somewhat complicated.”

Pippa nods and keeps waiting. She's heard that before. 

“Part of it is the baby.”

Pippa glances up at her, startled. “The baby? What does the baby have to do with anything?”

“I’m sharing my body with her. It feels... wrong.”

Pippa blinks. “But surely you don’t think she’d... understand what’s happening?”

“I don’t know. You know yourself how we’re -- connected --”

“I know what it’s like when you -- or I -- _deliberately_ reach in to connect with her. But in other moments --”

“I don’t know how much she feels, how much she understands. But the connection between us, the magic -- surely you can acknowledge that it’s _possible_ that she’s -- paying attention.”

“ _Paying attention?_ Hecate, she’s a months-old fetus. How could --”

Hecate closes her eyes, and Pippa feels an immediate pang of regret. She’s making Hecate feel stupid and there’s no need for it. “I understand,” she says, mostly truthfully. “However --”

She concentrates for a moment, traces a few circles in the air with her fingers, and then makes a sharp gesture towards Hecate’s abdomen. Hecate jumps and looks up, hands flying to her belly. “What did you just do?” she asks, probing her abdomen with her fingers.

Pippa smiles. “Just a tiny sleep spell. It shouldn’t last for more than an hour.”

For just a second Hecate looks frightened, and then she laughs. ”I suppose that’s one solution,” she says, and then her expression grows serious again. Pippa reaches out and takes her hand.

“So much for that,” she says. “But I know that isn’t all.”

Hecate exhales slowly. “I suppose not.”

“Especially since I suspect that if you really were worried about the baby 'paying attention,’ you wouldn't be much more comfortable with touching yourself than with me doing it --"

Now Hecate’s looking like Pippa’s accusing her of child abuse. _Why can’t I say one single solitary thing right today?_ Pippa demands of herself, heatedly. “That isn’t what I mean. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your doing that, Hecate.”

Hecate still looks dubious.

“I’m serious. You’re doing nothing wrong --”

“Then why,” Hecate bursts out, “are we having this conversation?”

“Because I want to understand! That’s all.” Here it comes. “You’re getting _me_ off about four times a night, Hiccup! I’m -- I spend all day dreaming about you, obsessing over you, and then we come up here and you fuck my brains out! But you... don’t want me --”

 _Don’t want me to do the same for you_ is the sentence Pippa is going for, but Hecate throws herself in at that point. “ _Don’t want you_? Pippa, you can’t tell me you believe that!”

 _Of course I don’t believe that. Mostly_. Pippa looks down at her hands. 

“Why do you think I was up here just now? Whom do you think I was fantasizing about? Whom do you think I am dreaming of every minute of every day? I’m going crazy, Pippa. I am losing my mind. Over you.”

“But I’m right here. Always. I’m a half-second’s transference spell away.”

Hecate falls silent again, her brief outburst over. Pippa takes that moment to try to figure out the right things to say, the things she should have been saying since the start of this conversation.

“Hecate,” she says finally. “I’m not pushing you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. If you don’t want me to make love to you -- if you’d rather... touch yourself --”

Hecate’s voice is low but passionate. “That is not what I want.” She adds, almost in a whisper, “I do not want to be like this.”

Pippa’s heart all but cracks open. She pulls Hecate into another embrace. Hecate hugs her back fiercely. The sheet has slipped down to her waist and her bare breasts are pressed against Pippa’s chest, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“I’m just frightened,” she says eventually, and she sounds so young.

Pippa doesn’t let go of her, sensing that she’ll find it easier to talk with her head on Pippa’s shoulder. “What are you frightened of?”

A long pause, and then: “I don’t know how to not be in control.”

It’s not exactly news to Pippa, but hearing it in Hecate’s voice, so soft and young-sounding... She has the fleeting sensation that they're 13 years old again, curled together in Hecate’s bed in that old, drafty, many-cornered room with all the bats, talking through Hecate’s fears of exams or the future or her father's judgment. The difference, of course, is the 30 years of isolation and obsession with control that have somehow slipped between those 13-year-olds and the two of them today. “What do you think will happen if you do let go? If you lose control?” Pippa asks.

“I don’t know.” Hecate’s voice is brittle now. “It seemed simpler not to find out.”

“Did you think I would judge you?”

“Not exactly?” Hecate hedges. “I just... I don’t know... who I’d be.”

“Hiccup. Love.” Pippa strokes a hand over Hecate’s hair, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. “You’ve been able to be in complete control of yourself, of your life, for a long time now. But that’s going to have to change.”

Hecate pulls away. “I thought you said we didn’t _have to_ do anything.”

“We don’t. That’s not what I mean.” After a moment, Hecate relaxes again. “I mean that with a baby on the way, life is about to get messy on its own, and you’re not going to be able to be in control of everything, all the time.”

“It’s different --”

“Some. But it’s part of the same thing. This change in our lives -- it’s going to change us as well, Hecate. Like it or not.”

Now Hecate looks faintly terrified.

“I know that you know it’s true. I don’t even think you’d want it not to be. You’ve spent decades keeping everything tied down, but now --”

“Now I need to abandon the person I’ve spent the last thirty years becoming!”

“Not abandoning her. Just... your world is changing. You need to be able to change with it. Let it shape you. And, yes, that is going to mean giving up some control.”

“You’re hardly making it seem less frightening.” There’s a catch in Hecate’s voice.

Pippa hears the catch and pulls Hecate back in. “Is it less frightening if you know how much you’re loved by the people you’re giving up control for?”

“Giving up control _for.”_ Hecate’s tone is surprised. “I didn’t think of it as giving up control _for_ you.”

“Well, when it comes to sex, you’re not. That part is for you. And I’m being serious when I tell you we can wait as long as you want for that.” A slight, sincere smile, very deliberately without mischief. “I do think it might be more fun to start there than to wait for middle-of-the-night feedings or colic attacks. But that’s your choice.” Pippa runs her hands over Hecate’s back, very gently. “It might be a good idea to start getting used to the idea of things changing now, though. Before the baby is actually here. That’s all.”

Hecate lays her head on Pippa’s shoulder again. Pippa can feel the rigidity leaving her shoulders, her back, bit by bit. Knows Hecate is accepting -- or beginning to accept -- what she’s saying.

“Here.” Pippa guides Hecate to lie back in the bed, head on the pillow. “Let’s just cuddle for a moment,” she murmurs, “and then I’ll go back and finish my meeting with Ada. She must be wondering what on earth’s happened to me.”

There’s a long pause. Hecate’s head is drawn in close to Pippa’s shoulder. Her breath is warm against Pippa’s neck.

Then she says, very softly, “If you’ve already been gone this long...”

Pippa cranes her neck to look down at Hecate. Hecate’s hand is stealing over her waist now.

“What would you say to --” The rest of the words come out in a rush. “-- staying here a little while longer?”

Pippa decides she is not going to misinterpret the tone of Hecate’s voice. After that long, difficult conversation, it seems hard to credit that Hecate --

Then Hecate’s tongue flicks out to lick just behind Pippa’s ear. Pippa gasps in surprise.

For the thousandth time this week, wet heat surges between Pippa’s legs. She slides her legs apart a bit, hampered by her skirt, which is on the narrow side. And then --

“Make me come,” Hecate whispers in her ear. “Please.”

Pippa’s eyes widen. Hecate gives a laugh that is small and rippling and slightly, enchantingly dirty.

Pippa dives under the covers, tossing them aside willy-nilly. Half of them land on Hecate’s face. She laughs again, magicking them away with a wave of her hand. Pippa is too busy to notice.

She makes Hecate come, and then come again, harder, she hopes, than Hecate’s ever come in her life. She licks and sucks, thrusts first with a few fingers, and eventually, after a half-hour of play, her whole hand. She makes Hecate beg. Makes her plead. Makes her test the bounds of the soundproofing spell. 

She makes Hecate lose control, and the delight in Hecate’s cries rings triumphantly in her ears.

Eventually, with the tang of come still on her tongue, she slides up to lie alongside Hecate, who’s lying with limbs flung akimbo, eyes closed. “So,” she murmurs in Hecate’s ear. “How did losing control feel?”

Hecate’s eyes are still closed. “I never… knew that was… possible?” she says, very slowly, and a single tear tracks down from one eye. Pippa kisses it away.

Then: “I should have done that years ago.”

Pippa bursts out laughing. “No argument,” she says, and nibbles at Hecate’s earlobe. Hecate starts, then opens her eyes to meet Pippa’s teasing, sparkling gaze. “Come here,” she says. 

“I’m right h--”

Hecate grabs her by the waist and makes an awkward attempt to swing her around bodily. Pippa rises up on her knees and somehow they end up with her over Hecate’s face, half-drunk on the challenging, daring look in Hecate’s eyes. Pippa turns around, lying over Hecate’s body, and, as Hecate eats her out, manages to use tongue and fingers to get Hecate off a third time before succumbing herself. By the end, “control” is a forgotten concept for both of them. 

They’re very late for supper that night, and Hecate’s foundation doesn’t quite cover the marks on Pippa’s neck. Ada is perfectly understanding of Pippa’s explanation that she had gotten to talking with Hecate and lost track of the time. Pippa intercepts an amused look between Ada and Dimity and hastily begins trying to distract Hecate, keeping her from doing the same.

Hecate does in fact seem to find her distracting, and, pleading a “headache,” transfers them both back up to her room twenty minutes after they made it down to the dining room. En route, she also transfers Pippa out of her clothing.

Tonight, Pippa resolves, is going to be a long night.


End file.
